


It Falls, It Turns

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:47:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mycroft leaves a mysterious envelope with John with the request to pass it on to Sherlock, John finds himself too tempted to resist a peek. What he discovers is a slice of Sherlock's personal history that affects him in more ways than one. But even before John has the chance to address his feelings, a stranger from Sherlock's past shows up at 221B Baker Street and throws both Sherlock and John's worlds up in the air. Who is this man and what is his powerful hold over Sherlock?</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Falls, It Turns

**Author's Note:**

> Without having spoilers in these notes I should say that you'll be able to see whether this AU is your cup of tea within the first three chapters of the story. It's a story with some dark undertones—I've attempted to touch upon the issues of consent and manipulation, but there is nothing drastic and I have done my best to explore the subjects with sensitivity. I've also tried to bring some balance in the overall tone, adding some lightness, so that the story doesn't leave you with the feeling of doom and gloom. It is quite relationship-focused with an underlying plot. The story is alternating Sherlock and John's POV and there is the occasional third character's voice—one of the reasons for its length. If all this sounds like something you would give a go, I hope you enjoy it!

 

**PROLOGUE: A PICTURE'S WORTH**

  
Not that he’s keeping count, but John has met Mycroft ten times in the ten months he’s known Sherlock. Be that as it may, he still hasn’t succeeded at treating their encounters in the normal, the casual way that people meet a flatmate’s brother. Trouble is, there’s too much unsaid around Mycroft. The man hints at things about himself; his office space hints at things about him; his attire, manners, and manicure do, too; annoyingly, even Sherlock stops being his abrupt, clear self when he speaks about his brother. Because what _does_ “He is the British government.” mean, really? How can one person be the government? John is an ordinary bloke, ex-military at that—he doesn’t do conspiracy theories. But he also hasn’t got the nerve to doubt Sherlock’s words, especially not with the rest of the evidence. And even without any evidence, it was _Mycroft_. You only had to meet him once.  
  
So as he’s trotting down the stairs to open the front door John knows that the proper thing would be to invite Mycroft in for tea. But he had the whole morning filled with doing DIY in the bathroom, and his left tonsil is still slightly swollen, and they don’t even have decent tea, just PG tips—which John doesn’t mind, but it’s hardly stuff for the _British Government_.  
  
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to stay unnerved and uncivilized long. He opens the door and Mycroft smiles at him, says, “Ah, John. Good afternoon. How are you?” After the briefest exchange—John always replies, “Fine, thanks,” because a) it’s safer that way, and b) like Mycroft doesn’t already know anyway!—Mycroft hands him a big, worn, white envelope and frowns lightly, saying, “I’m in a hurry but I wanted to drop this by for Sherlock. Some personal items I’ve managed to collect that I think he’ll be glad to have back.”  
  
John takes the envelope and gazes down at it, curiosity mingling with some awe at having direct contact with Sherlock’s past. Then his self-preservation instincts remind him who the person opposite him is. John lifts his head and meets Mycroft’s calmly shrewd gaze; they’re at eye level with Mycroft standing on the pavement and John on the top step.  
  
“I trust they’ll reach him safely,” Mycroft intones, then nods. He looks like he’s already thinking about something else. “Goodbye, John,” he says, smile perfunctory.  
  
John says his goodbye and closes the door, relieved but not quite sure about a number of things, as usual. It is rather naïve to put Mycroft under the label “a flatmate’s brother”. Just as naïve as putting Sherlock under that of “a flatmate”.  
  
***  
  
John finds himself surprisingly efficient in the afternoon. He progresses through it, ticking off things that have been gathering dust on his mental _To Do_ list for ages. It doesn’t take long to figure out the reason for this sudden bout of conscientiousness: The envelope—the unsealed envelope—glows on the table in the sitting room, innocuous, but all the while pulsing calls at a special frequency only John can pick up.  
  
And Sherlock won’t be home for another two hours. John just sent him a text to ask.  
  
It’s almost comical how John’s activities have spread out into invisible zones, each of which moves him nearer to the envelope, closing in on it. An hour left until Sherlock’s return and John’s elbow is touching the table. Half an hour left and his elbow is touching the envelope’s edge. Five minutes and John has tidied the contents of his entire computer, has rid it of all unnecessary files, drafts of his old blog posts, duplicate pictures, the whole lot.  
  
He even worked out how to clear his internet browsing history and has subsequently done so.  
  
Eventually he just grinds to a halt and hangs his head, staying like that for over a minute. He looks at the envelope out the corner of his eye. There’s a string of clear messages running through John’s head like the stock market figures that run across that building at Canary Wharf: _Do not touch this. It is private. You are not that kind of person. Do not touch this_.  
  
Ironically, it’s a sound resembling the closing of their front door that brings it home to John. The fear that he has lost his chance clamps around his throat and makes him realize just how badly he wants to do this. His hand reaches out and carefully but firmly picks up the envelope. John peers in first, every other emotion pushed aside by dark, titillating breathlessness.  
  
There are a number of papers in there, some with Sherlock’s writing, others with someone else’s. Also visible are the edges of a few photographs hidden amongst the papers, as well as some colourful flyers, a greeting card, and what appears to be a restaurant napkin. John’s fingers randomly draw out something with Sherlock’s handwriting on it. It’s a small, square piece of lilac paper, similar to a Post-It note. The writing says, _Gone to DH’s. Sorry about last night. S._ John takes out another piece of paper and his heart flips in his chest when he scans the well-known roundness of the letters, forming words that sound utterly a stranger’s. _I found the hidden reference. Thank you. Masterful. Come to mine later. Nothing on tomorrow, you can spend the night. S._  
  
Fingers tingling, John draws out a third piece of paper, thin and luxurious. He deliberately chooses something with the angular, beautiful letters that look almost like a print. The other handwriting. John devours the text in one breath, then re-reads a few times, not quite able to process.  
  
_Like a little ball of savage anguish you roll and unroll me, until I don’t know where I begin. Can you even see my need, slicing through my flesh like a butcher’s finest knife? If I could crawl under your skin, I would; I’d sleep along the blueness of your veins. Come back tonight._  
  
John’s hand rushes into the envelope of its own volition. His eyes itch with dryness and he remembers to blink, does so quickly, feels relief. He’s not thinking; he feels weightless and _consumed_ with the pursuit for more of this—this secret, this thing so private, so unlike anything he’s ever known about Sherlock. He notices his fingers have gone numb as they start pulling out the card—  
  
The photograph falls softly onto the floor, making John jump and swear in a coarse whisper. Then everything hushes as he looks at the upside-down black and white image of his flatmate. John slowly reaches down and watches his scarily white fingers pick up the picture, turn it around.  
  
It is unmistakably Sherlock, despite the fact that only small fragments of his face are visible; he’s looking out a window and, if anything, the photograph is of his back. But it is a Sherlock that John has some difficulty reconciling with the one he knows—though in an oddly disturbing way not with the one from the notes John’s just read. A slightly younger Sherlock, hair shorter and curlier, hand dropped by his thigh, a half-smoked cigarette hanging between the fingers. Mind blanking out, John zooms in on them: thin, slightly curved as they hold the cigarette, and as white as John’s are at present. But where John’s look ugly, Sherlock’s fingers are artistically pale. Just like the rest of his torso. All Sherlock is wearing is a pair of jeans, no belt. They are a perfect fit, only a touch lower on the hips.  
  
John can’t see Sherlock’s face, just part of the line of his upper lip and the tip of his nose. Not his eyes. John tries to see what’s outside that window, what the window is like, where it is, to catch any detail of the room, but he finds his brain has turned into a mass of slippery jelly that does just that—slips—and makes John fall with every attempt at rational thought or observation. John’s nostrils burn and he takes in as much air as he can, survival instinct the one thing to beat the jelly.  
  
His eyes move over Sherlock’s figure, though, with singular consistency. Over and over he takes in the familiar, slightly narrow shoulders with the long, elegant stretch of back below them. Not familiar, no—not like that. After a shower, yes—moving and gearing up; after an injury, yes—organic and marred. Never like that. Shoulders both tight, yet relaxed, their nakedness blinding, too obvious not to mean anything. Sherlock’s shoulder blades look breakable, but not vulnerable. _He is himself._ A coherent thought echoes through John’s reeling mind. _Sherlock is already Sherlock here after all._  
  
His eyes move down to the jeans. More narrowness, in the hips this time, but not in the curvature of the bottom. Sherlock’s thinner than he is now, and yet his bottom…John stares at it, looks and looks, and there is a flood of unbidden images in his head of where that bottom might have been just before the picture was taken, what could have been done to it, how it must have looked as—  
  
John jumps in his seat when he hears the noise of the door downstairs. He shoves the photo back in, his touch forceful to ensure that nothing sticks out, then pushes the envelope away across the table. His ears strain to hear the sound of Sherlock’s steps but fail. John feels the pain of stiffness all over his body as if he’s being defrosted. He opens his mouth to breathe in deeply once more, rubs his numb fingers, rubs them ferociously, properly.  
  
There are still no steps and John realizes he mistook the sound again. Sherlock is not back, but now that John has left the envelope, he doesn’t dare touch it again. Sherlock _will_ be back. He will be back any second and he will know, he will find out anyway—  
  
John gets up abruptly to remove himself from the table, but with the full stretch of his body there comes another realization that freezes him on the spot and dries his throat like the desert wind used to. He chokes and coughs, rushes to the kitchen and pours himself some water in the first glass he grabs, then gulps it quickly. The dryness goes away. The rest doesn’t. It is still hot and hard down there, impudent and so terribly wrong, so terribly pleasurable even to _feel_ , just like that, untouched…  
  
John touches it. He presses his palm between his legs and lightly squeezes, gasps and closes his eyes, every big bone in his body melting. His other hand grabs at the sink for stability. He stands in their kitchen, shoulders drooping, eyelids drooping, mouth drooping and he doesn’t move his guilty hand—he just holds it there, feeling the heat and the unabating hardness, the only material thing in the world. John shuts his eyes completely and there is a single image projected on the backs of his eyelids. It makes his hand grind instantly and that in turn makes him moan, ever so softly.  
  
The sound of feet moving up the steps reaches John’s brain and turns the image to flames until all his open eyes can see is ash.

 

 

**IT FALLS, IT TURNS**

  
_Chapter One_

There is a moment for everyone when the penny starts dropping. The clink might not be heard until years from that moment; the owner of the penny might not even notice it has begun its descent. But down it falls, turning and dancing in its own gleam, and from that day on things change.

***

John is having a long weekend for the first time in what must be a decade.

Sherlock is right that a very little detail can reveal a whole lot about a person, although not quite the way John means it here. _Who_ people are is not something that matters to Sherlock; his need to know about them is always born out of specific purpose. Thus, if John were a stranger to him, someone neither the subject of quick deductive exercise nor one involved in a crime, Sherlock would discard that little fact—

No, no. “To discard” would mean he would take it into his metaphorical hands and then throw it away. Discarding implies involvement of some kind. There wouldn’t be any. The detail of the long weekend would pass by Sherlock completely unnoticed...much like John would, probably, under those hypothetical circumstances. Yet that would be a mistake, because aside from giving away a lot about John’s life, in an oblique way that little detail is very much connected to Sherlock.

On the surface, it speaks about John’s career path. First he was in the Army, where the traditional division of weekdays and weekends didn’t quite apply. Then he was back home and jobless for a while. Then he worked only part time, so being off work for three days in a row was the norm—which only demonstrated to John how outside the norm his life really was. (Living with Sherlock did not help with that _at all_.)

So after all these years he’s finally got himself a real job. Sherlock’s practice has been picking up steadily and John was carried with the tide, having both enough to do and little time to spare for a full-time job. If John was Sherlock, he would stop and ask why. Why now?

John has worked at the hospital for about four weeks but he’s already feeling the strain. The days off work he’s taken to still run around with Sherlock have needed to be put back in, so John has been doing extra shifts and doubles. But it’s been worth it. It has served the hidden, very important purpose of getting full-time employment: He is slowly and as painlessly as possible shifting the boundaries of his and Sherlock’s life together. “Boundaries” being an ambitious word here, since his and Sherlock’s are either nonexistent, extremely fluid, or, really, plain…weird. Yet they needed redefining, something to make John’s involvement with Sherlock justifiably less intense, more sparse, while keeping him as his flatmate, his friend, and a casual partner in crime-solving. John is waiting to see how this little move pans out; if it doesn’t work, then—

But he would rather not think about that. What he’d prefer to think about is that finally he’s got a real long weekend ahead of him.

Unnervingly, though, at first he finds he doesn’t know what to do with himself. It takes an entire day of feeling out of sorts to realize that lying on the sofa doing nothing still retains the charm it had when John was in his late twenties. From then on it’s been a chill-out fest. Sherlock is in and out all day on Friday, then mostly in on Saturday. He has spoken to John occasionally, or rather at him, which is fine by John. It’s like having the TV on in the background, left on your favourite channel. It also means that the line is drawn quite suitably for John in that he has Sherlock’s nearness but not his attention.

Sunday rolls on all too quickly and gets to midday, which finds John flipping through some morning TV shows. He’s been doing it for an hour when he starts feeling a touch…well, he feels like a couch potato. It’s ridiculous after only two and a half days of inactivity, but his everyday life is usually so different—not that there’s any routine to it; it’s just a lot more eventful!—that the last couple of days seem like a couple of months. Perhaps he should put on some presentable clothes and brave the chill for a Sunday roast down the pub. It’s an idle thought but his stomach begins making a bit of a fuss about it. John had a takeaway meal by himself on both Friday and Saturday. Yesterday he also made something quick for himself and for Sherlock—nothing fancy, just some beans on toast and an omelette. Now his belly is rumbling for proper cooked food. Thing is, he feels too lazy to even get up from the sofa.

His problem is pressed to solution with the sound of the doorbell downstairs.

“I’m not getting that,” Sherlock shouts from his bedroom. John sighs and gets up, trudges to answer the door. _I’d better get myself sorted out and go for that roast_ , he thinks as he considers his attire: a dressing gown over a t-shirt, which in turn is tucked into a pair of tracksuit bottoms. He hopes it’s not someone important, of the client-in-high-places kind.

It might just be. The man John faces has an aura about him that makes John wish he’d run a hand through his hair before he opened the door. Shortish and of slight build, the caller is nevertheless very distinguished. John can’t quite put his finger on what exactly conveys that feeling; he still hasn’t got used to noticing consciously the details that form his impressions—he just _has_ the impressions.

A pair of big eyes meets his and a soft voice says, “Good afternoon. I’m looking for Sherlock Holmes.”

“Erm, yes, he—Yes. Come in,” John replies, moving aside. Expression quite blank, the stranger steps in and looks John squarely in the face—they’re roughly the same height. John can smell him now: something a touch extravagant, subtle, yet absolutely impossible to miss. The man’s coat is just immaculate, too posh for words. A very expensive-looking tie-pin catches John’s eye. John is pretty sure he’s noticed these details not because he’s learnt to apply Sherlock’s methods but because next to Sherlock’s visitor he feels like a half-eaten apple, abandoned by a pig.

The large eyes, the colour of coffee beans, bore into John’s and suddenly a pleasant smile stretches the stranger’s lips. John starts and gives a small smile in return.

“Follow me, please,” he says.

They climb the stairs, the other man’s scent overtaking John and leading the way. Barely at the landing, John calls, “Sherlock.”

Not a peep. John opens the door to the sitting room and gestures invitingly.

“Come in. I’ll just—Sherlock!” He raises his voice.

“What?” Sherlock yells back, cross.

“Could you come here, please?” John tries not to shout, mindful of the picture they must be painting. If this is a client he must be thinking he’s at the wrong address. John has to bring the resident genius quickly to display. No one doubts they’ve come to the right place after half a minute in Sherlock’s company.

“You have a visitor,” John calls. “Mister—” He looks at the man who just smiles at him vacantly and says nothing. Awkward, John scratches his ear and points vaguely in the direction of Sherlock’s bedroom.

“Just give me a second, I’ll go fetch him.”

But he doesn’t move. He isn’t sure which way to go. One option is via the landing, but that might mean brushing the stranger in passing; the other is through—

Luckily, John’s uncertainty lasts only a couple of seconds, after which his ear picks up the disgruntled sound of feet marching through the kitchen.

Sherlock appears, clad in his own dressing gown over pyjamas. Well, it _is_ Sunday. Sherlock’s face is a touch sour…

But then John isn’t sure whether he didn’t imagine that. Because as soon as Sherlock’s eyes fall on the man, his expression changes to something John cannot even give a name to.

Sherlock stares for a moment, then his lips open.

“Jim,” he says.

“James Moriarty.” The man turns to John, smiling politely, not extending his hand.

 

 

_Chapter Two_

  
_One Week Earlier_  
  
I’ve never stopped thinking about you, of course.  
  
But thinking about someone and wanting to see him are two very different things. The first has become a parasite I’ve learnt to live with. The second always threatens my impulse control—and really, I mean, at best it’s barely adequate. Such humming, burning immediacy, pushing, oblivious of everything else but itself. Not surprising, oh no. On the contrary—it’s so _you_ , Sherlock.  
  
I’ve had to put myself on complete abstinence for four weeks. No talking about you—not that I often do it to others anyway, at least not in a way that _means_ something. But any mention of you becomes forbidden, along with touching any of the things you’ve ever touched. There are still some of those left in my possession, even after everything your brother pilfered. No touching what’s left, no looking at it, no smelling it, zilch. No coming within a hundred miles of you.  
  
What would you think of the little system of measures I’ve put in place? I wonder. You’d be flummoxed, my dear, I bet you would. Drugs, yes—you’d understand that loss of control. But another _person_?  
  
It’s not that different, really. I have to keep myself busy—or rather, busier, while the danger is near. I also go a tiny bit extreme in my pleasures. I lost you there, didn’t I? What would you know about pleasures? Nothing. Well, apart from what I taught you.  
  
I’m ashamed to admit I sometimes waver; I allow myself a glance, Sherlock. A minute, no more, and there’s still a rule about safe distance. It came about after that time I brushed you in passing and caught a whiff of your scent. It was a bad fortnight afterwards. Some might say not just for me.  
  
But it gets so bad, the want—searing through me with all the delicacy of a razor’s flood. The attempt to neuter my desire for you has failed. Consciously, at least, I’ve done my best to spay Fate itself, make it unable to bear any news of you, thus sparing me my torment. And I have been quite successful; I’ve not seen or heard anything about you in over a year. The little incident with your brother doesn’t count.  
  
Or does it? Because it unsettled me, Sherlock. I mean, it’s been five years and here he comes out of the blue one day and we do our little thing where I pretend I’m a normal person and he pretends that he doesn’t feel ill at ease around me, and then he goes on pretending that this is just a civilized exchange between a relative and a now ex-boyfriend. And we both pretend there could be any other way than _his_ way…  
  
There could be, of course. But I’m not ready. I’ve put too much work into my return to risk it for the satisfaction of topping Mycroft.  
  
He said nothing about you to trigger my current predicament. Not that I asked, other than the neutral “How is Sherlock?” And please, like he would ever say, _You know, Jim. Sherlock is going through an interesting phase. Let me tell you all about it, because I know how invested you’ve been in him and you fucking deserve to know._  
  
“He’s fine,” was all he said. I’d like to see you have at that, Sherlock. Deduce from only that and from your brother’s _face_. His face…It makes me want to lick it, because he _is_ your brother, and he looks quite delicious in his own right as well. It also makes me want to smash it. Well, not actually _me_. Although I do wonder whether Mycroft doesn’t deserve my making an exception for him. A personal touch, as it were.  
  
I had nothing from him, Sherlock, nothing. Which doesn’t mean it was nothing. Evidently.  
  
Two and a half weeks in and, predictably, I was doing just fine, that rash all over my abdomen aside. Then by complete accident—not barren after all, Fate—I found out about John Watson.  
  
***  
  
Your hair is longer and you look in good shape, like you’re going to the gym, or running, or fucking a lot. It can’t be the last because the cadence of your hips would be different. You want it, though, _oh_ , you do—the signs are all over you, my love, each of them glowing red like a heat detector.  
  
Then the red intensifies, your back tightens, and your overgrown curls tremble eagerly with the sharp sway of your head as you glance behind you at the murky gaping hole of the front door, a hole from which a shape is beginning to form, an outline of a figure, a—  
  
What is _this_?  
  
It can’t be. This can’t be— _This_ has to be a client, a stranger, a random acquaintance, a crawling little insect that came over to deliver a message, anyone else, anyone—  
  
But your neck doesn’t lie. Your shoulders don’t lie, your thighs don’t lie. Your face, even from a distance, doesn’t lie—not to _me_ , not ever. And even if it did, there is plenty of evidence in the insect to identify him as Doctor John Watson. His shoulders for one. His identity, however, ceases to be of importance in an instant, because of what else he has revealed himself to be: The captor of that most elusive of possessions, that most craved of all gifts—your genuine interest. The first one since—Now the _only_ one _apart_ from Mycroft.  
  
Thankfully, while there still isn’t anything I can do about Mycroft, there is plenty I can do about John Watson. I will, too, in time. You can count on that, Sherlock. But first I need to find how to take the best advantage of these extremely unfortunate circumstances.  
  
_Observation, Jim._  
  
A short, lowly rag of nothing, hair the colour of the sand at Blackpool, greying. Plump nose. Features so unremarkable that they scramble and turn miasmic as my eyes try to capture them in some integrity. Figure revoltingly ordinary. Clothes revolting, full stop. A small swagger in the walk—confident. Left-handed, steady shot, plain taste, plain job, plain brain, plain, plain, plain—  
  
Wait.  
  
Wait.  
  
Oh. Oh, the _insect_. The insect, striving for the flame. And the flame, the flame, trembling elongated and brighter, a subtle exothermic reaction of unprecedented character.  
  
Oh, no. No, no, no. I will just have to come and see you after all, Sherlock.

 

 

_Chapter Three_

  
John finally has the perfect opportunity to get dressed and go out—he’s already been in his bedroom for half an hour with nothing to do, both his newspaper and his laptop downstairs. But Sunday dinner is all forgotten as is hunger itself. John doesn’t care much about newspapers or magazines, either.  
  
Half an hour. What are they talking about downstairs? What are they _doing_?  
  
John feels trepidation at the memory of the last exchange before he retreated. Perhaps he should have stayed. John has rarely heard Sherlock sound the way he did when he responded to John’s “I’ll be upstairs.” “You can stay, John,” Sherlock said quickly, almost hopeful. But the man—But James Moriarty spoke at exactly the same time, a touch louder: “Thank you, Doctor Watson.”  
  
So John just stood there, uncertain, looking between the two and noting Sherlock’s expression: wariness, guardedness, twitching curiosity, all directed at the visitor. Then John murmured, “Nice to meet you,” and left. This is a flatshare. When your flatmate has a private visitor you excuse yourself and leave. When the flatmate wants you to stay but the visitor thanks you for offering to leave them alone, you _do_ leave them alone. It’s basic etiquette.  
  
Which doesn’t mean that John has to like it. Nor is he positive he’s done the right thing. Then again, Sherlock would have stopped him if he really wanted John to stay—he is never shy to order him around.  
  
John doesn’t really have enough to go on to conclude what could have provoked Sherlock’s reactions…all of them. James Moriarty introduced himself and then immediately added, “You must be Doctor Watson. Pleasure to meet you.” John hesitated about whether he should extend his hand, but remembered he’d had some crisps only fifteen minutes earlier. It was as good an excuse as any. Besides, something told him the gesture wouldn’t be welcome. So he just nodded. “Yes. Hello.”  
  
He could feel the air charging like the little battery symbol on his mobile phone, blinking quickly toward the last bar. At the mention of John’s name, Sherlock’s eyes had become alert; James Moriarty turned to face him, still smiling—a wide smile, no teeth. He looked almost handsome like that but his eyes ruined it. And people dared calling Sherlock’s eyes weird, discomfiting, cold! Moriarty’s eyes had the qualifications for kindness: they were big, they were brown—the eye colour most associated with warmth—they were alive. But John would take gazing into Sherlock’s eyes any day, and not for _those_ reasons. He couldn’t find an ounce of kindness in Moriarty’s eyes. Sherlock’s were unfathomable, true; but they were also searching, curious, and just…wide open, for anyone who took the time, who managed to look into them for long enough. Three seconds of eye contact with Moriarty made John itch to find a pin and scratch the eyes’ surface, to see whether they were plastic like Harry’s doll’s eyes revealed themselves to be when John “operated” on them at seven.  
  
The association gives John pause, but not for his own dark impulse. He suddenly can picture James Moriarty doing the same thing—with the pin.  
  
Well, they are both personally involved with Sherlock in some capacity, and there are _very_ few people in that club.  
  
There was so much awkwardness downstairs. John did try to dissolve it. He started saying, “Can I offer you—” but Sherlock interrupted him. “We don’t have what Jim drinks,” he said, his eyes not leaving _Jim’s_ face. So John shut his mouth and stood silent and stupid for a few long seconds, until finally common decency prodded him to suggest he leave.  
  
He now gets up from the bed, where he’s been sitting with the heels of his palms pressed to his eyes. The top drawer of his dresser isn’t closed fully so John pushes on it. He then pulls another one open and his hand touches items inside—his underwear of all things—pointlessly. He tidies up some bits and bobs around the room, absent-minded, ears prickling to catch a noise from downstairs. The same little scenes replay in his head on a loop.  
  
So much for his restful long weekend.  
  
If there was any doubt this visit wasn’t about a case it was dispelled very quickly. Everyone who came looking for Sherlock’s professional help knew that Sherlock Holmes had Doctor John Watson for a partner and most of their visitors shook John’s hand and didn’t really expect him to leave. But Sherlock’s face when he saw Moriarty…John doesn’t need deductions to know this is personal. The question is _how_ personal.  
  
Of course, James Moriarty could be _him_.  
  
John hasn’t asked Sherlock about the envelope, about the notes in it or the photo. The whole incident was swept under the carpet of John’s mental quarters—not exactly forgotten, but persistently ignored for days. You couldn’t really forget crossing a major line both in your head and in your relationship with another person. The two of them haven’t discussed the latter, but for all that John is sure, _sure_ that Sherlock knows John touched the contents of the envelope. As to the shift in John’s head…  
  
John is right to define that incident as the moment he realized he’d irreversibly crossed the line between partnership, friendship—anything neutral—and the kind of engagement with another person that was hard to define but was certainly _not_ neutral. There’d been incidents before, of course. He is pretty sure that noticing the buttons on your friend’s shirt isn’t quite in the spirit of traditional camaraderie. Not just noticing, but having a dazed, suspended moment of wonderment at how that button, the one in the middle of Sherlock’s chest, tugged in its little confinement. Or worse—finding your eyes drinking in the panels of said chest; feeling a desperate, uninvited throb in the middle of your palm, begging you to place it where the material of the shirt pulled the tightest, to gently release the button, set it free, then insinuate your hand inside, cover the bare skin, feel—  
  
All those moments had lurked somewhere in him. John had only caught glimpses of them, like an explorer of the night ocean glimpsed a marine flora just before it hid its exuberant colours from the rays of his flashlight.  
  
However, when you looked at a photograph of your semi-naked friend and you became aroused—no, more than that: when you touched yourself, the image from that same photograph feeding your arousal, there was absolutely no way to call a spade anything other than a spade.  
  
That was nearly five weeks ago. John didn’t touch himself for the first three, not once. Even showering was a problem; every brush of his hand over his genitalia evoked one single, implacable memory. He needed a release, though, like any healthy male, but more so, he needed it because he was heading for sensory overload. Sherlock’s physicality felt—still does—like a feather that suddenly weighed a ton. John had bravely tried to be around Sherlock and convince himself he was confusing fascination with desire. Or that somewhere in the recesses of his brain wires had crossed and in the moment of big shock at seeing Sherlock as a sexual creature John’s brain had panicked and suggested _John_ was therefore seeing him as one.  
  
It was to no avail. Not only did the feelings refuse to go away, but John found it impossible to be in Sherlock’s close company and keep everything about himself in check: his tone of voice, the length of eye contact…He never realized what a true, true marvel natural body language was. How effortless it used to be for him to look at Sherlock before, without agonizing whether his eyes had moved away too fast or had lingered too long. Sherlock has fixed him with his own eyes a couple of times, obviously registering that something wasn’t quite as usual, but he has said nothing.  
  
At the end of the third week it happened, with the kind of inevitability that in retrospect is slightly offensive.  
  
John was tired that afternoon and still feeling a bit sore from the tumble down those steps. Sherlock had used the bathroom before him and came out of it, towel wrapped around his hips and hair slicked back. John froze; so did Sherlock. They locked eyes for less than a couple of seconds and then Sherlock slid into his bedroom, shutting the door with a soft click.  
  
John let the hot water scald his skin while his soaped hand stroked his length thickly, and he came so hard that for a brief moment darkness swept over him.  
  
Since then it’s been pretty much on. Only this morning John was lying warm and heavy in bed, his heels having just left invisible skid marks on the bottom sheet from his noiseless orgasm. All he needed for the final pump was to picture Sherlock’s face. Not Sherlock’s cock or sucking Sherlock off. Just his face, wearing its most neutral expression.  
  
John sits back on the bed and holds his head between his hands, feeling the peculiar urge to press harder and harder until he can hear a crushing sound. He lets go and frowns at himself, then gets up to go briskly to the window. Not much point in that. His eyes don’t care for any of the sights outside.  
  
He’s known the moment of reckoning will have to come sooner or later. John isn’t sure what’s preferable to hope for: that Sherlock cares enough to stop and wonder what is going on, or that he really doesn’t. John feels his lips stretch into a bitter smile. People say sex complicates everything and bloody hell, it does. And there hasn’t even been any sex between them! Yet. If ever. John doesn’t even know if he actually wants to have sex with Sherlock. The thought is still too novel, too big to jostle calmly around his head.  
  
But his wishes are immaterial, because Sherlock seems to be saving John the trouble. He must have spotted dozens of giveaways all over John, and whether he found them worthy of his attention or not doesn’t matter. If Sherlock hasn’t addressed this, it’s because he doesn’t want to. Facts far less massive prompt him to open his mouth, observations and comments sprouting out of it with the speed of that beanstalk from the story. Sherlock’s silence, Sherlock ignoring the issue completely, is as good as him saying no to John. _No, I don’t want any change between us in any way. No, I don’t want to go into anything that is remotely personal._  
  
Returning the favour, John has done the best he could: found full-time employment and hoped, like many before him, that an issue would somehow sort itself out.  
  
One thing he didn’t expect was the involvement of a third party—the invisible photographer who years after he'd taken that picture managed, unbeknownst to himself, to conjure up a very specific image of Sherlock in John’s head. One that John’s subconscious must have tried to extrapolate since the day they met. John is pretty sure the picture was taken by a lover, that the lover was a man, and that the man was very likely the man in their sitting room right now.  
  
Regardless of whether it’s him or not, John doesn’t like James Moriarty at all. He is too well groomed, too distinctive. His eyes are too sharp, yet too impenetrable. He is _someone_ , someone special—that much is obvious at a first glance—and John knows he’s both jealous and envious, but knowing his condition doesn’t make him feel any less ill.  
  
He lifts his head and listens, then walks to his bedroom door, pressing an ear to it. Yes. Thankfully, James Moriarty is also a man who’s leaving.

 

 

_Chapter Four_

  
Sherlock is once again confounded by the lack of logic in the ordinary human brain.  
  
Why would John get that full-time job if only four weeks later he stays _in_ the flat for three whole days? Why? It doesn’t make any sense. To say nothing that if he fails to be logical, he could at least try being considerate—  
  
But he can’t, can he? It would mean actually allowing for the possibility that it matters whether he is in or out. That his presence or his absence or, most complicated of all, his nearness while he is so distant—that all affect Sherlock almost as badly as the variable of having a case in his life.  
  
They do.  
  
Sherlock sighs and bends to pick another book out of the box. He’s already forgotten why he opened this box in particular. Oh, right—the archiving of the _Harrods_ theft.  
  
Sherlock’s own illogical responses make him want to throw the book across the room. He knows he is missing something, because there’s logic he can see and it should be able to explain everything. He’s known for a while that John is important to him. He has acknowledged that he feels good in John’s company. John is useful in his way but Sherlock doesn’t mean that. He doesn’t even mean that he likes John as a person, although that’s true, too. It goes beyond that, because Sherlock knows that he is fond of John for absolutely no reason at all, at least not a straightforward one such as John’s character or the things he does for Sherlock. Sherlock just _is_. Fond.  
  
With all that in sight it should be perfectly normal to be affected by John. What’s illogical is how bothered Sherlock is about it. _Why_ does it bother him? What’s with the frustration? And what about the real confusion: how sometimes when John is in Sherlock wants him to be out, but then sometimes when John is out Sherlock can do nothing but wait for him to be back? When John took that job, the first week was hell, awful, just…awful. He was absent _a lot_ and Sherlock was all over the place, and he wasn’t even sure whether it was because of that, until an inadvertent comment by Mrs. Hudson brought it home to him.  
  
At least the frustration is beginning to get pinned down. He hates not knowing; things of importance, he _must_ know. And who wouldn’t be frustrated if they couldn’t make sense of their own wishes anymore?  
  
There’s someone at the door downstairs. John might think Sherlock’s cranky mood is because he doesn’t have a case so it’s plausible he’s expecting Sherlock to get that.  
  
“I’m not getting that!” It feels good to let his voice out.  
  
He wonders whether John has noticed how cranky Sherlock’s been. That’s the trouble with lacking the general air of a ray of sunshine. (Sherlock made John delete that line from the blog.) People can’t distinguish between Sherlock being in what John and Mrs. Hudson conspiratorially call “one of his moods”, even if they do it only with their exchanged glances, completely forgetting the flat is full of shiny surfaces with perfect properties for reflection—they can’t distinguish between that and the times when Sherlock’s “mood” is the expression of something more lasting, stemming from somewhere deeper, from an outlandish territory that rarely sends a messenger to remind Sherlock of its existence.  
  
John isn’t people. But he is also just a man.  
  
A man who is calling his name from the landing now, and another man with him. Sod that. Someone’s golf clubs have gone missing perhaps?  
  
“Sherlock!” John calls again. Oh, why can’t they just leave him alone?  
  
“What?” he yells back.  
  
“Could you come here, please…You have a visitor.”  
  
It’s staggering, it is! _A visitor? Really, John? My, my, I wouldn’t have guessed!_  
  
Sherlock turns abruptly on his bare heels, pressing them into the floorboards. He feels the friction between skin and floor—it’s almost painful and it loosens the knot in him. He marches out of his bedroom and through the kitchen, prepared to dismiss within seconds whatever mundane person that has deci—That scent, not exactly familiar but—  
  
Jim looks at him from where he is standing next to John.  
  
Sherlock feels his scalp physically tingling.  
  
“Jim.” The name drops from his lips in a half-whisper. _Prone to point out the obvious, too, aren’t we?_  
  
Jim turns to John and smiles. “James Moriarty,” he says.  
  
***  
  
Sherlock isn’t sure how this used to be done; how talking to Jim went. Thankfully, he does remember well that Jim was one of the very few people with whom conversation didn’t depend entirely on Sherlock to make it worth having. Sherlock used to listen to Jim talk. He didn’t always have answers to what Jim said, either.  
  
He realizes they’ve been standing silent and looking at each other for a whole thirty seconds after John went upstairs. Sherlock quickly scans Jim. He needs something to help him find his bearings, to understand at least the purpose of this visit. Jim looks exactly like he always does. There is nothing novel, nothing distinctive about him to give Sherlock any new information—and to hell with it, it’s been years! Everyone changes; everyone has changes happening in their life.  
  
Sherlock suddenly wonders what changes Jim is able to read all over him. He has the advantage of observing Sherlock’s personal space, too, and of catching Sherlock unprepared. Oh, Jim might as well turn around and walk away without a single word exchanged. He should already have seen everything there is to see, learnt everything about Sherlock with all that wealth of data at his disposal. Something flares up behind Sherlock’s ribcage and makes his throat dry. Maybe Jim has managed to see more, to see things Sherlock is not aware of. He used to do that. He used to be able to read him so well, to catch Sherlock’s needs at their bud and satisfy them instantly. Even when Sherlock didn’t understand them himself, didn’t know what he needed or that he needed _that_ , Jim used to explain to him that he did...  
  
The space behind Sherlock’s ribcage feels too tight, his lungs too heavy.  
  
“Tea?” he says, because that’s what one does when one has a visitor. That’s what John does. He shouldn’t have interrupted John when John started offering Jim a drink. Sherlock doesn’t know why he interrupted him. He just didn’t want John to offer Jim something nice. He didn’t want John to be nice to Jim, to be his normal, nice self. It was as if it would…taint John somehow. Or harm him.  
  
He really wishes John had stayed.  
  
“Just a glass of water. Thanks,” Jim says.  
  
Sherlock turns and goes to the kitchen, runs the cold tap for a few seconds and pours some water into a clean glass, letting the flow touch the tips of his fingers. He returns to the room to find that Jim hasn’t moved. His eyes don’t jump nervously from any surreptitious scanning, either. It’s as if they were switched off in the short time Sherlock was gone and now they are switched back on again.  
  
Sherlock passes him the glass.  
  
“Thank you,” Jim says, smiling and lifting his eyes to him. Sherlock remembers he is considerably taller than Jim just as he realizes that he’s closed the distance between them.  
  
“Have a seat,” he says, turning his back. He walks to the fireplace and turns to his chair automatically when in the last second something sends him directly into John’s chair. Jim takes a big gulp of water then walks over and sits across from Sherlock. He looks around in a deliberate way.  
  
“Nice place you’ve got here,” he says.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“The area is nice, too. I did a building two streets away.”  
  
Sherlock says nothing. He has no idea what to say. Jim hasn’t stopped smiling since the moment he turned to John to introduce himself. Ah.  
  
“How did you find out where I live?” Sherlock asks.  
  
Jim tsks. “Always so suspicious. Is that a way to start a conversation, Sherlock?” His lips stay stretched, but his eyes grow void of mirth. It’s incredible how obvious that is to Sherlock now; now that he’s looked at John Watson’s face across from him for—  
  
“I didn’t stalk you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Jim interrupts his thoughts, face stone cold. Then it turns animated again. “It was in the papers—not the address, that case. There was this article about that engineer with the missing toe. I used to work with him so I actually read the thing and imagine my surprise when I found out who had solved the mystery but my dear…” Jim stops and tilts his head, half-cheeky, half-apologetic. “But you. Right up your street, of course. Then two weeks later there he was, the star of the article, limping into a meeting I was having with some contractors. We got to talking and he told me about your practice, about your colleague Doctor Watson, about—Oh, you should have heard the praise he sang you, Sherlock; you’ve done well for yourself.”  
  
Sherlock is astonished at the little gust of pleasure he feels at the very bottom of his spine. Jim’s eyes don’t leave his face; they light up again now, sincere.  
  
“He mentioned the address. And since only a month before that I had given Mycroft all those little mementoes I had kept, I thought this was an opportunity…”—Jim rests his back more comfortably and his face becomes amused—“A sign, if you will, that I should come over and say hello. Hi!” He looks almost sweet. “Turn a new leaf,” he adds very softly.  
  
Sherlock digests all of this, eyes continuing their fruitless scan of the man in front of him. It’s one of Jim’s mysteries, of course. There were times he would be stark naked and Sherlock would still be able to read his entire day on him. Other times he would be ready to go to a meeting and Sherlock would have to work really hard to form even the vaguest hypothesis about it.  
  
Jim tsks again. “Stop, jus—Just stop, okay?” He shakes his head, face slightly drooping. “Why can’t you just ask? I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”  
  
“Will you tell me why you’re here?” Sherlock’s voice has lowered so much, it gives _him_ a pause.  
  
“I just did. That’s all there is, Sherlock.” Jim spreads his hands open; the right corner of his mouth turns upwards. “Not everything has to be complicated or mystifying.”  
  
“Mockery certainly lends credence to your request that I trust you.”  
  
“I didn’t ask you to trust me.”  
  
“The request was implied.”  
  
“Yeah, okay.” Jim rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t mocking you.” He purses his lips and shakes his head. “I’ve forgotten how sensitive you are.”  
  
Sherlock huffs a silent chuckle. Jim’s eyes dart quickly all over his face, before locking their gazes. He leans forward.  
  
“Listen, I only—Can we just try and talk without doing this? I know you’ll say I make you do it, and then I’ll say that you pull me into it, and then it’ll be the old song and dance again, but I don’t want to do that. I really don’t, Sherlock. I just want to know how you are.” Jim slumps back in his seat and his face softens. Sherlock is surprised he can keep tab on Jim’s expressions. He feels quite numb, yet oddly so...Damn it. Damn it.  
  
“Tell me about your work,” Jim says. “I was glad to hear you were doing this properly now. I know what it means to you. Just talk to me for a minute and then I’ll be on my way, because I can see I’m making you uncomfortable.” The last word is said with Jim’s characteristic theatrical flair: eyes wide open, face pulling at all angles, voice going…bizarre, like it’s running on half-speed. Sherlock watches him, fascinated, unable to understand why that word, why said in that way. He catches himself quickly and frowns at Jim.  
  
“You want to know about my work?”  
  
Jim hums.  
  
“Which case?”  
  
Jim’s face twists. “No—No, not case. I don’t want to know about a case!” He sounds irritated now, like Sherlock’s got it wrong again, and God, isn’t _that_ a trip down memory lane?  
  
Jim watches Sherlock, lifts his hands again as his head drops. “Okay, no, wait. Sorry. Okay. Sherlock.” He lifts his head and meets Sherlock’s gaze. There is nothing but interest and honesty in his eyes. “I’d like to hear how you’ve been,” he says, articulating every word with care. “If you’re enjoying yourself, if you’re less bored. If you have good cases, like—How did you work it out about the toe, by the way? Was it the soles of the shoes? Because, I looked at him and I had this idea…” Jim slowly smiles, his teeth showing and his face transforming into a festival of delightful lines and dimples.  
  
Sherlock stares into his eyes for a long while, the temptation of talking to someone who might just be able to keep up, who’ll understa—to _Jim_ , throbbing in his belly and in his groin, and silencing any dissent, any instinct to just get up and open the door.  
  
He nods. “What was your idea?”

 

 

_Chapter Five_

  
Funny how people think it’s easier to talk to your family, to your close ones. To the people you live with. In John’s experience, most of the time it’s trickier than talking to just an acquaintance. Hell, he might not be the type to do it, but he can quite see why being honest with a complete stranger would hold less tension. John doesn’t have to look as far as the profoundly fucked up communication between Sherlock and Mycroft to prove his point; all he has to do is think of a far more ordinary pair of siblings. How many really open conversations have he and Harry ever had about her drinking? Conversations where honesty hasn’t been buried under denial, lies, accusations, anger? Few enough to fit on the fingers of one hand, that’s how many.  
  
Sherlock is doing something with the mail when John comes downstairs. Indelicately opened envelopes litter the floor by the armchair and Sherlock’s lap is full of white A4 papers. Bills, most likely. Sherlock’s not really dealing with his correspondence, then; just using the mail to keep his hands busy. It’s reassuring to see him do the equivalent of John’s pointless rummaging through the drawers when he was upstairs.  
  
So, Sherlock is emotionally affected.  
  
Every time John comes across evidence that Sherlock is capable of that, he doesn’t know whether to rejoice or to feel ashamed. The shame comes from his continuous need to make Sherlock more human. It feels like betrayal sometimes. As if John is in just for the flashy brilliance, and the rest of the package is just something he has to put up with.  
  
Lately, in his sweatier moments—of the cold sweat variety—John has sworn that if this whole situation somehow manages to resolve itself, he will never ever moan about Sherlock again, will never strive to change him. He’ll just breathe freely and be glad things are once again fine between them. Naturally, John knows these pledges have been the frustration talking, and his would be a hard promise to keep. People _are_ selfish—they want others to bend to their convenience. Still, John has reasons to believe some changes would actually make Sherlock happier. Allowance for more sentiment would be one such change, in spite of what Sherlock thinks.  
  
Or maybe that’s just John’s average personality. He can’t help but judge other humans through the prism of his own humanity. Sherlock…Sherlock is not like John or any other person. There is nothing average about him. So John might have to concede that it’s possible Sherlock knows what’s best for him. Not what’s good. What’s best. Feelings not being it.  
  
“You can just ask,” Sherlock says, voice terribly low. John starts.  
  
“I didn’t— I wasn’t thinking about…”  
  
It’s ineffectual, though, because it shows that John knows very well what Sherlock meant. More so, John realizes his speed-of-light ruminations have stemmed from his reluctance to, indeed, ask. He’s rarely comfortable asking Sherlock personal questions. Probably no one is.  
  
Sherlock is studying him from the chair. The bright daylight streams through the window behind him and creates a dim halo around his head. His unblinking eyes amplify the impression of a vision but the low hum they produce in John’s stomach is unmistakeably physical.  
  
John clears his throat.  
  
“Who was that?”  
  
Sherlock’s expression doesn’t change. It takes him a couple of seconds to answer.  
  
“Someone I knew. Someone I didn’t expect to see.”  
  
“Yeah. I noticed.”  
  
Sherlock looks at him sharply. John just shakes his head and doesn’t say anything, waiting. Sherlock keeps his eyes on him for a few seconds, then looks down into his lap. There is a siren somewhere nearby, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to hear it. As the silence stretches John gets anxious, wonders whether Sherlock hasn’t closed the subject.  
  
“A friend?” John tries.  
  
A slight line appears between Sherlock’s eyebrows.  
  
“Not really, no,” he says slowly.  
  
“Did he…Was he here about a case?” John asks, then curses silently. What use is a closed question? What use is a _no_?  
  
“No.”  
  
John has never been one to force a confidence out and besides, his interest is so obvious people would be able to spot it from across the street. Sherlock continues to seem distracted. His eyes have dropped to the letter in his hands. He’s been rolling it between his fingers; he now runs the nails of his thumb and index finger over the fold a couple of times. The hairs on John’s neck prickle.  
  
“He is the—” Sherlock begins abruptly, then just as abruptly changes direction. “That envelope, the contents of which you perused last month. It…” Sherlock lifts his eyes. “It’s him.”  
  
John hesitates, then nods. He feels slightly shivery to have things drawn out in the open with such unexpected directness, but if that’s Sherlock’s way so be it. In fact, it’s strangely liberating, as if someone’s removed a collar from John’s neck, one he didn’t realize was too tight.  
  
He takes a couple of steps further into the room, unsure about whether to sit across from Sherlock, who is following John’s movements only with his eyes. John shuffles in his spot then goes to the table, leans his bottom on it, almost half-sitting. He starts folding his arms over his chest but stops himself in time.  
  
“What did he want?” he asks.  
  
“To see me.”  
  
“Why?” It’s quicker than John would have liked, but does it really matter whether you add five miles to your already crash-certain speed?  
  
Sherlock’s gaze flickers to his hands again before returning to John—with less intensity this time. John would think the stretching pause meant Sherlock was avoiding telling the truth, but he knows it’s something rarer. Sherlock is actually thinking before speaking.  
  
“I don’t know,” he says at length.  
  
John purses his lips forward and considers his next question. His offer. He considers the motives behind it and the possible outcomes of its acceptance. Hell, one of them has to be considerate here and it’s never going to be Sherlock.  
  
“Do you want to tell me about it?”  
  
Sherlock finally moves his head, turning it to John, exposing the left side of his face to the window. His eyelashes and eyebrow become almost translucent; he looks exotic, half albino. His lips are heartbreaking in their transition from left to right: from dark, heavy fleshiness to light, ethereal dusting. They tremble for a second, then Sherlock speaks.  
  
“No.”  
  
Crumbling in disappointment and relief, John takes a breath and briskly nods.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and is surprised at how soft his voice sounds.  
  
***  
  
Distraction doesn’t prevent Sherlock from noticing that John takes at least ten minutes to come downstairs after he’s heard Jim leave. It’s charming, really, that he continues doing things as if Sherlock wouldn’t be able to see right through them. It also makes Sherlock feel furiously protective of him. He doesn’t know why, but it’s John. He can be very confusing.  
  
In an entirely different way than Jim can.  
  
Sherlock looks at his lap. He’s opened the final piece of mail, apparently. It unsettles him to have evidence in his hands—literally—of how affected the impromptu meeting has left him. Maybe it was the surprise factor.  
  
John walks in and there it is—that look in his eyes that has been there a lot lately and that Sherlock cannot pinpoint; he only knows it’s very much the way John looks when _he_ is affected. There’s some worry, but not the sort that gives off subtle signs when it’s a family matter. There’s intensity, yet not quite the kind that makes John’s eyes flash when he’s fed up with Sherlock. There’s a bewildering mixture of…wistfulness, almost, and something subdued. Sadness?  
  
Confusing.  
  
Sherlock has recently wondered whether, for instance, the look on John’s face doesn’t mean John knows there’s something seriously wrong with Sherlock’s health. Something that Mycroft has managed to keep hidden from Sherlock through skilful bribery and intimidation of the relevant medical personnel. Sherlock feels in perfect form but some diseases don’t manifest themselves until the later stages of their development. It is improbable, but not impossible.  
  
There is a more likely hypothesis, of course: that John has decided to get married, move out, move on with his life. Which would make this the look of parting sentiment and of some concern as to how Sherlock would get on without him. Quite condescending, really. Not entirely in character for John, but there’s been other evidence to support the idea, such as John’s increased preoccupation with masturbation or the fact that he did get a full-time job. Probably hoping to meet a suitable mate by way of it. The chances of finding one while visiting crime scenes or staying indoors aren’t very high, the population of 221 Baker Street consisting of Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson—both not exactly marriage material.  
  
There are other hypotheses shimmering at the outer edges of Sherlock’s mind, but Sherlock’s been reluctant to stop and look at all the data, find the connections, match against the theories. It’s John. The one person with whom Sherlock can do the closest to what people describe as _letting yourself be_. He really should find the time to go to Tibet, speak to that man again. For all his theories, utterly unsupported by evidence, there was something about him that just—He was intelligent. And he seemed to know what he was talking about—a trait Sherlock respects in any professional. If professional is quite the word to describe a spiritual guru.  
  
Regardless of the motives behind the Look, John is here at the door, his face all the more eloquent for his attempt to keep it in check. There’s more in his eyes now, so much new data. Sherlock panics for an instant that he’ll be overwhelmed and will never be able to record it all, let alone examine it.  
  
One thing he recognizes right away, though, is curiosity. Not just because he knows what a curious John looks like, but because he’s seen himself in the mirror since he was a child. Yet John wouldn’t ask. All these rules, all the games people play. Sherlock did, too—earlier with Jim, and Jim reminded him he didn’t have to. A bit of a relief. Jim always said Sherlock didn’t have to be anything but _himself_ when they were together.  
  
Yet either Jim expected something different after all or Sherlock was doing it wrong. Because being yourself shouldn’t require so much conscious effort, or at least Sherlock doesn’t think so.  
  
“You can just ask,” he tells John, the words rushing out of his mouth to throw an anchor into the present.  
  
“I didn’t— I wasn’t thinking about…”  
  
_Of course you were._ Sherlock smiles inwardly. _Listen to what you’re saying._  
  
Evidently John does because he blinks quickly, hesitating, and doesn’t argue.  
  
“Who was that?” he asks.  
  
Sherlock takes a couple of seconds. He doesn’t know how to answer that question simply.  
  
“Someone I knew,” he says. “Someone I didn’t expect to see.” He adds it so that he can hear it out loud, confirm it as the reason for his lack of focus. He was simply _unprepared_.  
  
“Yeah. I noticed.”  
  
Sherlock looks at John sharply, wondering whether John, too, hasn’t seen things Sherlock doesn’t know about himself. No. Unlikely. Sherlock must have been very obvious. A testament to the part shock must be playing in his reactions at the moment. Good.  
  
John is looking at him, waiting for more, but Sherlock doesn’t know what to say. Is he expected to spill his guts to John, talk about his private life? The very idea, initially uncomfortable, has turned out to be a matter of acquired taste. At the moment, though, it seems abhorrent.  
  
“A friend?” John probes again.  
  
“Not really, no.” Funny how time does give you perspective. Whatever Jim Moriarty was to him, Sherlock knows he was never a friend.  
  
“Did he…Was he here about a case?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock replies quickly, relieved to have a closed question with such a straightforward answer.  
  
It hits him immediately: He feels like he’s lying to John. Jim was here for only half an hour and Sherlock’s back is already arched, all his mental lines crossed, doubt and suspicion spreading through them like ink through water. He doesn’t want to lie to John, even if he isn’t doing it.  
  
“He is the—” No secrets. “That envelope, the contents of which you perused last month. It…” Sherlock looks at John. “It’s him.”  
  
John doesn’t seem surprised that Sherlock knows. Apparently two people can live together, be themselves around each other, and still have a secret. But is it a secret if they both know about it?  
  
John finally steps into the room, looking around, then after a moment goes to lean on the table. His whole body seems so tense. Keeping distance?  
  
“What did he want?” John asks.  
  
“To see me.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
It’s more direct than Sherlock expects of John but that’s not what gives him pause. Who can say why Jim does things? Jim himself always makes his actions seem perfectly logical when he talks about them afterwards. But it was always as if Sherlock was refused permission to examine a crucial clue. John, on the other hand, is the blueprint for clarity, even if he rarely explains himself. Sooner or later Sherlock knows why John has done whatever it is he has done, and then the certainty Sherlock feels is unrivalled.  
  
John is waiting for an answer patiently. _Why did Jim want to see me?_  
  
“I don’t know.” Sherlock tells John the truth.  
  
John looks at him, thoughtful. He must be teeming with questions. He’ll start now, for all his quietude and his respectful tolerance. This is too good an opportunity to miss. He did look into that envelope, didn’t he? He can’t possibly pass up the chance to dig into Sherlock’s past. John’s lips move and Sherlock braces himself to be pried into, sniffed around, harassed, sweetly and unassumingly—  
  
“Do you want to tell me about it?”  
  
The softness of John’s voice will never cease to give Sherlock pause.  
  
He looks at John, seeing him all of a sudden in the bright colours of the present, as if the air in the room has been abruptly renewed to the last molecule of oxygen. John’s face seems almost panoramic; Sherlock doesn’t have to add anything to it, has no need to attach elements to see it in its entirety. Looking at John is enough.  
  
_No, I don’t want to tell you about it, because you are my blueprint for clarity._  
  
“No,” Sherlock says.

 

 

_Chapter Six_

  
John watches helplessly as Sherlock spends the three days after James Moriarty’s visit making love to his phone with his hand. He traces its outline; he presses its keys; he distractedly cleans the display with his thumb. The love-making comparison might be a bit over the top, but then again there are also Sherlock’s furtive and—at least to John’s eyes—longing glances at the blasted thing.  
  
The phone reciprocates, eventually. It’s consistently been delivering messages that trigger nothing more than an eye roll from its owner, but on Monday evening it beeps and John by this point can read how a message is accepted just by the way the hair at Sherlock’s nape trembles. John doesn’t know if that counts as an improvement of his observation skills but if it does, Sherlock can have it back, thanks very much. It’s not brought John much joy.  
  
Sherlock reads the message and then, with his back still turned to John, he slithers out of the sitting room and into his bedroom without John catching a glimpse of his face. John doesn’t know how long Sherlock stays in there; he goes up to his own bedroom about half an hour later. He doesn’t fall asleep until way after midnight. He doesn’t even attempt to. He reads, then goes over some drawings in a medical textbook—he’s been trying to do a proper re-fresher course. It’s an hour after he switches off the light that he hears Sherlock return to the flat. John never heard him leave.  
  
In all honesty John keeps it together that night. He does go back and forth in his suspicions, doubting his judgement and frisking his skull with his fingers to alleviate the tension. But ultimately he calls himself a paranoiac and squeezes his eyes shut with determination until at last sleep takes pity.  
  
Sherlock is his usual self the next day, if not a touch more relaxed. John doesn’t have a chance to see him during the day, though—he goes to work before Sherlock’s awake. But when he comes home he finds Sherlock weighing some crystallized powder on his scales and melting something on his Bunsen burner. There is a faint smell of caramel in the air, but it seems cloying to John. His pressing the point may be a bit harsher than necessary; stubbornly airing the sitting room for fifteen minutes when it’s about three degrees outside is hardly reasonable, either. But in his defence, with all the trying not to think about his attraction to Sherlock, about what Sherlock’s sudden love affair with his phone means, and about where Sherlock was the night before, John finds that even aiming his fork for his own mouth is a bit of a struggle.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t leave his experiment, of course, but at least he is done within an hour. The rest of the evening is passable.  
  
Tuesday and Wednesday follow with John going out both the evenings after work—a decision that forces him to endure some dreadful conversations—but he doesn’t care much about spending time with Sherlock, who is swinging between black, flat despair (“I’ll never work again. I just know it.”) and outbursts of sarcastic irritability (“John, do feel free to chew an apple with your mouth closed.” Pause. “Actually, on second thought, don’t. And make sure you check the wall between your nasal canals. No one should have such difficulty breathing _quietly_.”) On Wednesday night they shout at each other so loudly that Mrs. Hudson is compelled to come upstairs, fretting and making things worse.  
  
John can’t help but wonder whether this particularly vicious onslaught of ennui isn’t the result of failed expectations on two fronts.  
  
On Thursday morning he gets some answers to his questions but they only raise more questions.  
  
John is shaving in the bathroom when he hears Sherlock in the kitchen—up early. A cup of divine cappuccino—divine _for_ the bizarre fact that it is a touch flavoured, sweet but somehow not sweetened—awaits John on the kitchen plot and there is the packet of bread suggestively placed next to it. John boggles at the cappuccino for a moment, head turning suspiciously in the direction of the sitting room then back, sniffs the drink and takes a chance on it.  
  
He feels his eyes flutter closed in appreciation and when he opens them again a veil seems to have lifted in front of them.  
  
John makes toast and brings some to the sitting room, together with the butter and the jar of orange marmalade. There he has a bit of a moment. He catches Sherlock yawning and pawing at his eyes, then stretching, the sounds coming out of his chest not entirely dissimilar to purring. John is grateful his hands are occupied with the bearing of breakfast goods.  
  
Sherlock eats two pieces of toast, making conversation—or what he thinks passes for it, meaning he insults some of the authors of articles in the paper, ignores others, and corrects the rest. He doesn’t glance at his phone once and with each passing minute John feels such a sense of relief that he—  
  
Sherlock’s message tone chimes.  
  
“What is it?” John asks, unable to stop himself at the sight of Sherlock’s exuberant eyes drilling the display.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t respond immediately; John can practically see his brain whirring. For all intents and purposes Sherlock will have completely vanished from their table within seconds, in spirit if not in body.  
  
“Sherlock,” John says, touching the sleeve of his dressing gown. “What is it?”  
  
Sherlock’s eyes, glassy and flashing, meet his. “Um,” is all he says. He stares at John for a long moment as if he’s seeing right through him or, as John realizes with a sharp pang, not seeing him at all. Sherlock finally blinks and frowns. “What?”  
  
“The message you just got.” John points with his chin. “Is it a case?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock says slowly, eyes definitely seeing John now. “No. It’s...It’s nothing. Must go.”  
  
And from that moment on John knows for sure this whole thing has something to do with James Moriarty.  
  
On Thursday evening Lestrade calls and over the next couple of days and nights they are quite busy. John is relieved to notice that Sherlock doesn’t check his phone once during the case. No messages that give him pause arrive, either.

 

 

_Chapter Seven_

  
Now Sherlock remembers _exactly_ how it went.  
  
He remembers the anticipation, the swinging between doubt and hope, the self-disparagement during those rare moments the pendulum stopped and Sherlock was allowed a true glimpse of his pathetic self. Then on it went again—an exercise in waiting.  
  
Until finally there it was, his reward. The hit. Jim’s treat for him.  
  
He looks at his phone again. Nothing.  
  
The first time Jim did it must have been about a week after they met. Sherlock’s phone beeped; he saw the sender and almost didn’t open the message—Jim had been interesting enough for Sherlock to want to see him again, but if he was going to be boring and want to exchange texts, Sherlock wasn’t in. It was a picture message, though, and Sherlock opened it, curiosity shuffling in him. Then he was frowning at the display and sitting up. The picture was of a window: ornate, plain glass, late nineteenth century, protestant church, ground floor—and there were only four nonsensical words with it: _Tree in the forest_.  
  
Sherlock’s brain slid into gear smoothly, instantly, without a second of hesitation. It took him nineteen hours to track down the reference to a 1952 case—the murder of the entire club of church bell ringers in an East Anglia village. Clever murderer, needing to kill just the one, but killing the rest to hide the tree in the forest; Sherlock was very appreciative of it all. Only later, back at home when, exhausted, he plopped himself into his chair, did it occur to him how effortless his suction into the puzzle had been. There and then Jim Moriarty rapidly transformed from a moderately interesting individual to a promisingly exciting one.  
  
He became fascinating when he did it three times in a row, within fifteen days.  
  
He became necessary by the end of the first month.  
  
Sherlock hopes it won’t take Jim a month to send him something now. That he will Sherlock knows. “I might have something for you. I’ll text you.” _When_ , though, is an unknown, perfectly in Jim’s style. Jim would say that the question mark— which feels as if it has turned upside down and hooked itself into Sherlock’s collarbone, hoisting him and leaving him helplessly dangling — is half the point.  
  
Sherlock can’t deny that Jim taught him a few things. One, some patience — obviously. Or perhaps more accurately less impatience. Certainly more self-control. There’s irony in there somewhere. Jim always said the drugs were okay, that he understood why Sherlock needed them. That Sherlock was special and he was allowed things that others weren’t. Yet it has been in staying clean that Sherlock’s strengthened self-control has manifested itself most prominently since they parted. Ah, yes and—Well, the smoking Jim minded; said it made Sherlock’s sperm taste vile.  
  
The other thing Sherlock learnt was reciprocation. Fine, fine — _began_ learning _something_ about it. Jim tried to teach him give and take. He used to look so forlorn in the beginning, realizing the astonishing deficits that Sherlock had in the relationship area. “It’s a privilege to teach you, Sherlock, but not a joy,” Jim used to say. He used to tangle his fingers in Sherlock’s hair—Sherlock doesn’t know why he remembers that now. The fingers danced with the mood Sherlock had put Jim in: sometimes content, sometimes playful, sometimes taut and rigid, making Sherlock hide his stinging eyes in embarrassment.  
  
While the evidence that Sherlock was hard work had always been there, Jim was the one to surmise it explicitly. Plenty of other people must have acted out on it and some Sherlock had vaguely noticed, but it was Jim’s honesty that drove it home to him: Sherlock wasn’t just abnormal; he was difficult to love. Jim let it slip once, feeling guilty afterwards despite Sherlock’s shrugged assurance that it didn’t matter to him.  
  
Sherlock still has no idea what to make of that. On the rare instances he’s pondered the subject abstractly he’s wondered if this was something one learnt during childhood, a way to conduct oneself that made one easy to love. The deceit seems too simple; surely everyone would see through that? Or is it a matter of trial and error that occurs in adulthood? Like a strategy that provides shortcuts, so that instead of taking five years for someone to love you it takes them one? Sherlock knows perfectly well, of course, that “love” and “relationships” don’t quite work in such precisely defined parameters. It doesn’t matter anyway. A voice in Sherlock’s head has computed that being easy to love would likely equate to a lot of sentiment pouring into one’s life and Sherlock _really_ wouldn’t know what to do with _that_.  
  
Jim, the teacher. Not only was he—Is he?—less dull than most people. He was also the first person who chose to be close to Sherlock without any inherent necessity. He was the first person who wasn’t family or paid in some capacity who made an effort to be patient with Sherlock.  
  
Patient entirely not the way John is. Sherlock can’t quite put his finger on it, but it’s just different. He doesn’t even know whether John is patient with him. John certainly snaps at him, loses his temper, shouts on occasion. Makes his point repeatedly, ticks Sherlock off, storms out! Jim never stormed out and the only times he ever lost it with Sherlock was _that_ time and then the two times after they stopped seeing each other. Which, considering the circumstances, seemed to be normal behaviour. True, Jim had other ways to make it abundantly clear Sherlock was doing something wrong. But he was so quick, almost as quick as Sherlock. How could Sherlock hold it against him, then? The little signs of irritation, the weariness, the disappointment, all flicking across Jim’s features—they were justified. After all Sherlock would have been much worse in his place. “I just want you to think about it, my love — how _you_ treat people who don’t keep up.”  
  
There was no loss of temper, no waving of arms, no nagging. The one thing Jim wanted Sherlock to offer in return was to fully appreciate what Jim was going through and how much it cost him to put up with him sometimes. He so rarely demanded—  
  
But when he did, even with just a look, with just a whisper, it was as if all of a sudden a set of massive loudspeakers erupted right next to Sherlock’s head. Sherlock’s heart thumped and his entire body, every single one of his senses leapt in shock—then went completely numb.  
  
***  
  
The first message makes Sherlock worry that time has only made Jim rubbish at this. It’s a picture of a row of houses on a suburban street with one word: _lather_. It takes Sherlock less than six hours to work out that this was Fanny McAlister’s house. He is surprised that a young family has agreed to buy a house whose entire original wooden flooring had to be replaced for the amount of blood that had soaked into it. The first step—the phonetically close “lather” and “ladder” promised an easy trail and it was, disappointingly. Still, it was better than nothing. Sherlock drops in bed at three, both sated and tired.  
  
When he wakes up on the next day, the thought that John is now full-time employed is strangely his first thought; his first feeling that of irrational, confused, tense protest.  
  
Sherlock spends most of the afternoon experimenting with sugar, adamant to make John love the coffee Sherlock makes for him more than any other coffee in the world.  
  
***  
  
John has expanded his search for a mate by trawling the pubs now. Not only does he spend his entire days in that hospital but he is unavailable in the evenings, too. Leaving Sherlock to die of boredom, because the possibility of becoming the first human to actually have that recorded as his cause of death is looming in the distance with alarming speed. Sherlock won’t scoop as low as to beg John to stay in, of course. Besides, John’s mood has been quite tempestuous lately so he’s not the greatest company. Sherlock wonders whether he hasn’t let his own frustration spill over John, infect him, but if that’s the case, why would it trigger such an uncharacteristic rebellion in response? Sherlock, bored, is hardly novel for John.  
  
A small grain of discomfort grows in Sherlock’s belly and eventually sends him to bed late on Wednesday night with his spinal cord entirely rigid, as if an ivy plant had wound up around it. John came back very late and Sherlock doesn’t quite remember who said what but they ended up shouting at each other until Mrs. Hudson showed up, fretting and making it worse.  
  
Sherlock lies on his back in the dark, eyes wide open, sleep banished from them while for once he _tries_ to figure it out, at least this last argument, at least tonight. The very task adds more anxiety instead of taking some away. Sherlock remembers how he read that the actual process of psychotherapy did not provide comfort, not for a while, but in itself was likely to bring confusion and pain, until issues began getting resolved and the much coveted inner peace started settling in. He wondered who in their right mind would subject themselves to that, but here he is now, ready to face this sort of…stuff voluntarily. He _must_ alleviate some of the tension in his head. Or in his chest, more like it. Everywhere.  
  
Sherlock’s previous attempts at sorting through his emotions haven’t been spectacular—or numerous, for that matter, so his is not an auspicious endeavour. But he fights his impulse to list the elements of Mendeleev’s periodic table and tries to stay in his head, with this feeling of…John. The feelings that need sorting out refuse to be given names—all Sherlock’s mind can supply is _John_. John is a feeling.  
  
Sherlock wonders what it is that makes John’s absence jar him more now than at other times, and the yelling, too. His mind goes back to the arguing and from there something takes shape—doubt, uncertainty, suspicion…  
  
Fear. Fear that something’s changed and John can’t take it anymore. Can’t take Sherlock, rather. No—that Sherlock is no longer allowed to be himself with John. Because he really wasn’t much different than his usual self, unless he’s missing something significant, and while that is a possibility Sherlock just doesn’t think he is. But there’s more than that, and it twists and turns, unwilling to be caught, like a slippery fish with a hook in its mouth that just won’t come out. Eventually it does, though, because a very determined hand can compensate for lack of skill.  
  
This isn’t just about Sherlock not being himself around John. It’s about John. Maybe he doesn’t feel that he can be himself around Sherlock any longer. Maybe that’s why he’s out more and more, and when he’s in, Sherlock doesn’t let him be, does he? Complaining about apples and his breathing, _for goodness’ sake_.  
  
It seems that all of Sherlock’s mental energy gets used up on these conclusions. His mind disintegrates each time it tries to probe beyond and finally Sherlock falls into uneasy sleep.  
  
No messages, all day, all night.  
  
***  
  
It arrives on the next morning and Sherlock has the very discomfiting feeling that Jim is watching him from inside his skull. Because Sherlock wakes up feeling different for the first time since Jim’s visit; he feels resolute somehow. He makes John a cappuccino and leaves it for him in the kitchen, then goes to the sitting room to wait for breakfast, while plotting ways to pester Lestrade more efficiently for anything he can send Sherlock’s way. John walks in, hands occupied with cups and marmalade jars, and there’s the tiniest trace of foam on his upper lip. Sherlock’s caught mid-yawning and stretching, and the sight of the foam makes all his joints, bones, muscles shift and crack pleasantly post-stretch, bringing relief, a spike of pleasure, and a welcome sense of hunger.  
  
It gets better. John thanks him for the cappuccino, looking sufficiently interested when Sherlock refuses to give away his secret with what he hopes is a mystifying smile. The paper is most engaging and Sherlock has already seen a little something there that might just prove promising. He eats two slices of toast and John is quiet, watching him, counting his bites with some tender relish. His eyes are so much softer this morning that Sherlock feels a stupid urge to stretch out his hand and touch them…At least the bags under them—John hasn’t slept well, either, but it doesn’t seem to matter now, because they’re both back to being themselves, if not with something indefinable, something extra in the air—  
  
Then Jim’s message arrives and the pull of it is scary.  
  
It looks like a good one, too, this time. The Natural History Museum—so much data to sieve through. Sherlock’s brain doesn’t even wait for permission; it starts, images and numbers, facts and factoids pouring in and rearranging themselves, barely succeeding to make space for the new batches. Sherlock has to go there, of course. Somewhere in all that John speaks, then there’s a touch—  
  
It takes a moment for Sherlock to register that, but he does, because touching doesn’t happen to him often enough just to be washed away with the rest of the data.  
  
“What is it?” John asks, his lips thinner, draining of colour, his brow wrinkled. God, his expressive face—  
  
_My blueprint for clarity._  
  
“It’s…” _I can’t. You need to stay clear, please, you have to._ “It’s nothing.” _How many sections on the ground floor? Side entrance?_ John’s eyes are losing softness like snow at rapidly dropping temperatures. _Disability access?_  
  
“Must go,” Sherlock says, and does.

 

 

_Chapter Eight_

  
Working on a murder investigation when there is an elephant in the room showcases the differences between John and Sherlock beautifully. Not the obvious ones, such as who the genius is and who is…his mirror. Rather, the subtle ones, such as who can abstract himself entirely and operate in tunnel vision, and who has to make a real effort to stay focused. Still, John tries to put his unsettlement aside and on a couple of shaky occasions manages: Being nearly drowned in a toilet bowl has the power to obliterate even the largest metaphorical mammal from any room. The case is solved, John is just about okay, and if anything, the moment back there by the toilet—Sherlock’s panicky caress, sweeping John’s wet fringe off his forehead—has somehow only managed to add salt to John’s wound.  
  
On Sunday morning Mycroft checks on them in person. John thinks nothing of the fact that Mycroft manages to aggravate Sherlock in less than ninety seconds, then to send him storming out of the flat in another ninety. Mycroft doesn’t leave afterwards, though. He turns to John, smiling pleasantly before looking up at the ceiling, his whole countenance hinting that an offer of hot beverage is really in order. At this point John starts doubting whether the fast hostilities were entirely unpremeditated.  
  
While in the kitchen, John hears Mycroft moving about the room. John can just picture him, eyes gliding slowly, almost lazily, more subdued than Sherlock’s but equally ruthless in their examination. John senses rather than knows what’s coming. He drops two PG tips pyramids in the two cups, privately gloating that _this_ brand is all they have, adds milk and, in a gesture that highlights his own ability for petty childishness, puts some sugar in Mycroft’s tea. He then takes the cups to the sitting room.  
  
Mycroft settles himself into John’s chair and stirs his tea unhurriedly. John brings his own cup to his lips and takes the first sip with care. Mycroft drinks and his eyes narrow over the rim of his cup, decorated by a horizontal wrinkle above the bridge of his nose. His face smoothes out, however, as he lowers his mug.  
  
He watches John for several seconds, before remarking conversationally, “Sherlock seems on edge.”  
  
John does a mental slap of his forehead. Mycroft is _prying_! John did sense it, but was tricked by the unusual setting—he’s rarely allowed to stay in the comfort of his home when this particular activity takes place.  
  
Right. Well, two can play that game.  
  
“You don’t mean the case,” John says.  
  
“The case was closed nearly six hours ago, John. It hardly takes more than two for Sherlock to file it and forget about it.”  
  
John nods and gives him a small smile. Mycroft’s nod back seems friendly.  
  
“Well?” he says.  
  
“He had a visitor a few days ago.” John speaks in his most mundane voice. “I think it was someone important. A private visitor, I mean.” The clarification is unnecessary, but you can never really tell with those glazed eyes.  
  
Mycroft lightly purses his lips. “Go on,” he says.  
  
John can’t help it and flexes his shoulders.  
  
“And he’s been checking his phone a lot. More than usual…Went out once in the middle of the night. That’s all I can tell you for sure.” He needs to be careful here. For all he knows Mycroft’s already figured out John’s exact fantasies, to their last, filthiest detail. Then again, he is a busy man and he hasn’t seen John face to face for weeks. It’s not impossible John’s secret is still safe so a little precaution to keep it that way won’t go amiss.  
  
He scratches his eyebrow. “Sherlock seemed affected, said it was someone he knew. James Moriarty—that was the name.” John pauses, pointedly looking Mycroft in the eye. “Do you know him?”  
  
“Yes,” Mycroft drags. “Not well, but we’ve met. Very recently, in fact. You know him, too. You remember that envelope I gave you for Sherlock some weeks ago?”  
  
Oh shit. John’s head drops resignedly and he feels irritation bubbling up in him. Why do they both have to do that, watch him…perform like a clueless monkey? And why hasn’t he learnt his lessons? It’s been almost a year.  
  
He lifts his chin and looks Mycroft squarely in the face.  
  
“Who is he?” Then he has a rueful afterthought. “And don’t tell me he’s someone from Sherlock’s past, because I already know that,” he says firmly. “ _Who_ is he?”  
  
Mycroft lifts his chin, too, but doesn’t look confronted.  
  
“James Moriarty is the only person with whom my brother has ever had a relationship in the more…common sense of the word. That, of course, does not make the relationship common.”  
  
Nothing John hasn’t suspected, feared, or plainly known, but it still makes him recall the toilet bowl. To his salvation, Mycroft continues to speak.  
  
“I’m not surprised Sherlock was affected by seeing him again. It was quite a…an intense affair. Certainly enough to scramble the inner workings even of a much more emotionally adept person. I must confess I was glad when it was over. And doubly glad in that I didn’t have to put an end to it.”  
  
Mycroft looks up at the ceiling again, then lightly sighs.  
  
“James Moriarty was not someone I would have cared to interact with,” he says. “Or—and I’m sure you will appreciate the significance of what I am about to say—to find myself on the wrong side of.”  
  
John’s eyebrows rise before the end of the sentence.  
  
“Was he—Is he dangerous?”  
  
“Not in the sense you mean, no. But then again…” Mycroft’s face twitches, an unexpected and welcome display of uncertainty. John can see that Mycroft is choosing his words carefully, and reluctant admiration for Moriarty flares up in his gut, only to be transformed into resentment.  
  
“He is very unpredictable,” Mycroft says at last. “And his reappearance in Sherlock’s life is most unwelcome. He knows how to put him on edge…And keep him there.”  
  
He turns to look at the fireplace and John holds his breath, realizing he’s won—he’s finally about to be privy to some real details.  
  
“Their relationship was indeed intense,” Mycroft says. “The end of it even more so, and rather unpleasant. That is, of course, bearing in mind how open my brother is with me about his private affairs. This is just my perspective, acquired from a certain distance and with a great deal of resistance on Sherlock’s part. I respected that…to a degree. Contrary to what the world wants to believe, I don’t actually think _any_ business of Sherlock’s is my business.” Mycroft’s face looks older wearing its pensive frown. “Some things are best left to happen, no matter the fall out.” John has to strain his ears to catch the last few words.  
  
Mycroft seems to forget for a moment that he isn’t alone, but John does nothing to disturb him. He feels an odd sense of sympathy for the man across from him: a man both familiar, yet still the stranger your mother failed to warn you about.  
  
Mycroft’s frown deepens, but his voice is at normal volume when he speaks next.  
  
“Still, from any perspective one thing was evident—Jim caused Sherlock a lot of pain.” Mycroft suddenly turns to John and John fights an impulse to blink repeatedly. “Although that might not be readily evident.”  
  
Pointed eyes bore into his and John has the feeling that he has to concentrate here, because there’s something vital he might miss. But he doesn’t know how long this particular door of opportunity will be open, so he hurries to make the most of it.  
  
“How long ago was that?”  
  
“They were…together for about a year. The separation stretched over six months. It was nearly six years ago.”  
  
“Has Moriarty— Have they been in touch since then?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”  
  
John wants to say, “Oh really?” but he _has_ learnt a thing or two after all. Mycroft is watching him expectantly and John has the disconcerting feeling that this is too easy; Mycroft was the one after information initially, yet now he appears to be offering it with no real prospect for return-on-investment.  
  
Maybe John’s just being paranoid again. And unfair to Mycroft, who is probably taking the rare opportunity to talk to one of the very few people in the world whom he trusts where it comes to his brother. The thought gives John further encouragement.  
  
“Do you think Sherlock still—” Well, maybe _too_ much encouragement. John rephrases quickly. “Why would he be affected so much? I mean, if it’s been a while and they’ve not been in touch.”  
  
Mycroft’s brow wrinkles with the closest thing to earnestness John has seen him exhibit.  
  
“I don’t know, John. A lot of Sherlock’s more intimate experiences still manage to be a mystery to me. I would venture as far as to say that you have a better chance of finding the answers to your questions yourself.”  
  
John quickly scans Mycroft’s face, but there doesn’t seem to be a change from sincerity with the last sentence.  
  
He rubs his eyes. “Well, I’m not going to ask. He was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it.”  
  
A thin smile meets John’s words. “And Sherlock understands his own needs so well,” Mycroft says, then, before John has a chance to say something, he stretches. “Well. I must be going. I’m very glad you’re both well. Again. The continuous defiance of that particular improbability never ceases to amaze me.”  
  
John gives him a lopsided grin as they both get up from their chairs. He turns to follow Mycroft—  
  
“Don’t see me off, John.”  
  
“Oh…Okay.” John stops in his tracks. “Um…See you soon, then.”  
  
“Not too soon, I hope,” Mycroft says, eyes almost twinkling. “Goodbye.”  
  
He is at the landing when he turns and steps back into the sitting room.  
  
“And John—do tread lightly. Sherlock came out of that relationship very—He really wasn’t fine.”  
  
John replies the only way he can.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
That won’t be hard, because John still can’t see how he will tread there at all.

 

 

_Chapter Nine_

  
Thursday is such a busy day. Not only does it take Sherlock the whole of eight hours to trace Jim’s Natural History Museum reference down to an Agatha Christie story about blackmail — _It would have taken two if it were a real case and not fictional, Jim; that’s not playing fair_ — but then Lestrade calls while Sherlock is still out. Jim, picture references, and literary detective work are all forgotten as Sherlock hurtles through the investigation of a seemingly domestic murder that leads straight into a good old-fashioned diamond smuggling case.  
  
He doesn’t expect it to be dangerous and is therefore completely unprepared again — this time for John’s distorted face. After the brief resuscitation, John splutters and coughs and whizzes, head lolling and fingers weakly gripping Sherlock’s lower arm, and Sherlock doesn’t have air in his own lungs, and that’s taking sympathy pains too far. Who drowns people in toilet bowls these days anyway? Six-foot six monsters with metal teeth, that’s who. Monsters who must have taken the order “Get rid of them!” to mean _Take your sadistic pleasure in bringing about their death_.  
  
Death’s proximity makes Sherlock feel pins and needles in his brain. He remembers the morning, John eating breakfast, forehead descending into lines as he looked at Sherlock reading Jim’s message. Suddenly Sherlock has to see the lines, has to make sure they are not what would have been the last thing he remembered of John alive. He brushes John’s wet fringe off his forehead and John looks up from under Sherlock’s fingers, eyelashes stuck together and eyes focusing—then bringing focus back into Sherlock. Home. They need to go home now.  
  
***  
  
It’s been a while since Sherlock felt content in such an acute way. But that’s the Sunday morning he has. He catches himself noticing the slanted pale rays of sunlight that still manage to find their way around London’s densely built landscape and come into their sitting room. The light makes John’s hair almost silver but silver matte, as if it’s been dusted with flour. Sherlock would like to touch it, which is a paradox, because it’s both unnatural and natural all at once. He’s not a tactile creature by default but the urge to touch John hasn’t diminished since the moment he found him by the bowl. The fact that Sherlock had to spend the three remaining hours of the night alone in his own bedroom only exacerbated that need. But John said they should both get some sleep; he had his doctor’s face on, despite being the one who’d just had medical assistance. Sherlock didn’t want to object to John. John looked too unwell and too small to be objected to, to be made to stop and argue. But it didn’t mean Sherlock liked being stuck in his bedroom, either. He spent most of his time lying on his front, face restlessly turning left and right on the pillow, sometimes disappearing under it, all while his brain tried to unwind from the case and all the rest of it, what with John nearly _dying_.  
  
At long last dawn broke and Sherlock heard John’s feet softly pad outside his bedroom door on their way to the bathroom. Sherlock nearly gave himself whiplash throwing aside his duvet and jumping out of bed.  
  
They have a chat about the case while they eat breakfast, both in their dressing gowns. Sherlock secretly wonders whether he hasn’t spent the last few weeks living in an alternative reality. Because this, here, is what they usually do; this is in no way different than so many other mornings after a case, but it feels like Sherlock has been pulled out of a disorientating, foggy reality to be dropped right into…well, the opposite of a nightmare. He lets himself be lulled into it, rolls around into the feeling like Mr. Whiskerson, the cook’s cat, used to stretch and roll unhurriedly over the sunny spot on the grass next to the bench by the back door.  
  
That is before Sherlock’s infernal brother turns up, making the subliminal connection to Sherlock’s childhood a lot more material. During those years, Mycroft was able to make Sherlock stay at any place just by being there himself. Right now, though, Sherlock’s back is up and his claws are itching within a few minutes of Mycroft’s arrival. But Sherlock doesn’t scratch. He leaves instead, because of John. John, who is sitting in his chair with his mouth slightly ajar and a weary expression on his face while his eyes flicker between Sherlock and Mycroft; John who honest to God nearly died several hours ago, so it is a bit wrong for him to feel weary on the next morning, especially on account of Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock goes directly to Regent’s Park like he planned he would, although in his plans he was doing it with John in the early afternoon, if John felt up to it. In Sherlock’s fantasy John scowled at Sherlock, offended by the implication in Sherlock’s question; of course he was up to it, John would say, he was a soldier, not a wallflower. So Sherlock was going to have to think of ways to invite John out for a walk without showing any concern, possibly through making some mildly obnoxious comment, but it was all academic now, wasn’t it, because here Sherlock was in Regent’s Park alone, and when did he manage to get to the Open Air theatre?  
  
He paces around for a bit longer, waiting for the chilly mid-morning air to clear his head, until he begins to enjoy his walk. It’s ironic — he’s been spending too much time on his own lately and it didn’t occur to him that it could still feel good. What _has_ occurred to Sherlock is that when he goes back, John will be home. They can keep talking about the case, have some food, even watch telly. Sherlock can tell John what John should put in his blog and nowhere does it say that a second walk in the park can’t happen today.  
  
Sherlock is so wrapped up in his visions about the rest of his own day that it takes him a few moments to realize it’s his phone that’s ringing. He pulls it out of his coat, thinking, hoping that it’s John calling to tell him the coast is clear from brothers who are always such know-it-alls.  
  
It’s not John.  
  
Sherlock hesitates. He holds his phone in the palm of his hand and watches the name and the number, listens to the ringtone, seconds ticking, suspended in genuine uncertainty. He doesn’t want to speak to Jim, not really. He’s forgotten about Jim, it seems, if the sudden jolt of awareness that yes, there _was_ Jim before the case, is anything to go by. But on the other hand it’s Jim. He might have something interesting to say. He might offer something interesting. Sherlock never knows with Jim and not knowing what’s coming when it’s coming from Jim has always been many things but boring isn’t one of them.  
  
Sherlock touches the screen and brings the phone to his ear.  
  
“Hello.”  
  
“Hi.” Jim’s voice is chirpy. “Is this a good time?”  
  
“As good as any,” Sherlock says with stony flatness, because he wants to. Being on guard with Jim will need years of reassurance to transform.  
  
“You sound like you mean as bad as any. Everything all right?”  
  
“Fine. What do you want?” Now _that_ Sherlock didn’t mean to say, but wariness doesn’t make for good manners, least of all with Sherlock. He’s also wary about himself, unhappy with himself even, for answering the phone; now that he’s heard Jim’s voice Sherlock knows he really shouldn’t be speaking to him. It was different with the text messages because Sherlock didn’t even text Jim back, hasn’t showed any sign that he received the messages, or done anything about them, or thought about Jim. But this is opening space for communication and that’s a lesson Sherlock should have learnt six years ago.  
  
Jim is quiet for a moment, then says, “I just wanted to say hi. Did you get my messages?”  
  
“I did.”  
  
“Did you have fun?”  
  
“I solved them both, if that’s what you mean. Very quickly.”  
  
Jim chuckles. “I detect reproach. I’ll try and do better next time. In fact…”  
  
Sherlock’s fingers tighten around his mobile. He knows the pause is there on purpose, but it doesn’t stop the flip in his stomach. Is this—  
  
“I’ve been working on something,” Jim says and Sherlock knows that it _is_. He still doesn’t know whether it’s a good thing he’s answered his phone, though. “So maybe I was distracted,” Jim continues. “My apologies. I should have accounted for your getting much better at this. Shall I give you a call when I’m done? I don’t think you’ll be disappointed this time.”  
  
Sherlock starts speaking but finds that he needs to clear his throat. “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s up to you.”  
  
Jim hums. “It is, isn’t it? Well. I won’t keep you. I hope you have a good Sunday. Got anything planned?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock says.  
  
Jim laughs.  
  
“So skittish, Sherlock; you’re adorable.” Sherlock’s abdomen muscles contract. “I’ll be in touch,” Jim says, and rings off.  
  
***  
  
Much to Sherlock’s surprise, the rest of the day continues to be good. A bit lazy and altogether normal, and that says something about the changes that have occurred in Sherlock’s life, because back in the past no day was ever relaxed after an impromptu call from Jim. John also seems fine, despite shooting Sherlock furtive glances, but Sherlock doesn’t have it in him to do anything more than roll his eyes at John’s blinding lack of inconspicuousness. Maybe he is confirming that Sherlock is there, too, breathing and well, like Sherlock’s been doing — he’d like to think a lot more discreetly — although that doesn’t make sense, since Sherlock has been breathing and well all along.  
  
By Sunday evening Sherlock is sprawled on the sofa talking to the TV and at some point John throws his arms in the air and tells him to stop ranting, to which Sherlock indignantly replies that he does not rant. Sherlock is convinced that this serene state of existence would have had every chance of spilling into Monday if John didn’t have that stupid morale that prompts him to shrug off recent near-death experiences and go to work.  
  
From then on the only way Sherlock can describe his week is “going downhill”. Once routine is restored it brings back reality, and with it boredom and unnamed anxiety start taking turns tormenting Sherlock. The empty flat reminds him that Jim hasn’t disappeared — and neither has Sherlock’s painful need for distraction, especially when the promise for one of substance was made so clearly. Sherlock begins checking his phone again, both dreading there will be a message and smarting at its absence — it pushes Sherlock further into the claustrophobic tunnel of his mind. It’s worse, though, because now that his mind is left idle, it runs rings around him and brings up all the truths Sherlock has tried to prevaricate with: that he has a pretty good idea what Jim wants; that things are not fine between Sherlock and John; that Sherlock is scared about having to deal with Jim — and John. Relationship stuff was never a point of adequacy for him, not one bit. It’s depressing how it finds its way into people’s lives no matter the effort.  
  
In the span of a couple of days Sherlock’s concentration become so abysmal that he can’t even look through his microscope before quickly starting to fidget. No experiments hold his interest sufficiently to fill in an entire day and there is still no work. He goes through some old unsolved cases but his mind won’t oblige him: it pushes them back, refusing to give them a go in the absence of new data. Sherlock doesn’t know _how_ he was able to spend days in a row completely on his own before. On Wednesday he goes back and forth between his bedroom and his microscope ten times in five hours. He desperately wishes he could take John’s brain and put it under the lens, look at it and have all the answers right there, plain and liberating in their finite, irrefutable structure; something conclusive to write down in a notebook. Because John’s being odd again, there but not there, and Sherlock has no idea what that means.  
  
What Sherlock really wishes is that he could repeat the experiment with his own brain.  
  
There still hasn’t been a single message from Jim. All communication that’s happened between them is one visit and one phone call, for God’s sake, yet it’s like Jim has stealthily moved right in there, right into Sherlock’s own damn head.  
  
By the end of the working week Sherlock finds himself tensing to the point where he begins to contemplate what he doesn’t want to contemplate. Meanwhile he and John continue to live as if nothing’s happened, and in reality nothing _has_ happened, and on Friday night Sherlock needs something to happen, because otherwise _he_ will have to make it happen, and that's not going to be good at all.  
  
Which is when Jim sends a message asking Sherlock to meet him at Jim’s place.

 

 

_Chapter Ten_

  
You see, this is _exactly_ why I can’t get rid of you, Sherlock. Nothing you do is ever the way I want it and it only makes me want you more, only makes me stack up incidents on top of incidents, experiences on top of experiences, in the hope of—  
  
In trepidation, too. Because I don’t know what I’ll do when one day you start acting the puppet and get dull and make me get rid of you. It isn’t easy to be afraid of being bored more than of being dead. But you already know that, don’t you? The pill you almost took, before your precious Doctor Watson butted in—  
  
That was a bit insulting, actually. I wouldn’t have let you die! Please. Two good pills. Until I say so.  
  
But I bet the thrill was worth it, hmm, my pet? I would have given anything to suck you off then, anything. Well, anything but reveal myself, apparently. Battles and wars, Sherlock, battles and wars. I hope one day soon you appreciate what I’ve gone through to rein myself in all these years. Each exercise in patience feeling like a calloused thumb over newly burned, tender flesh, dragging…  
  
It makes me so sad sometimes that my virtues have always been underplayed in your eyes. I spent a year in a relationship with you and you never got what a big, what a massive fucking deal that was. Okay, that one wasn’t your fault. I had to present you with the background of a normal person — past relationships included — so you couldn’t have known. As if I would have relationships. As if I could stand it. But you, you— You made me have a relationship with you, you know that? Because if you had only done what I expected you to do, I wouldn’t have wanted to see you again, then the next time, and the next. And what do we have when we put together time after time? Oops, look at that.  
  
Just once. I mean, tonight for example — are you fucking kidding me? Just once, if you had only done—  
  
No, no, that’s not very nice of me. You used to do what I said, what I wanted. But I wanted you to want it, too, Sherlock. Well, again with the loop; I did, but I didn’t, because I liked taking. So wonderfully complicated, this _relationship_ of ours. I can never thank you enough, baby—for making me want to take off my skin and shake it off like a blanket to let all the itchy, nasty crumbs fall out. Beats work any day.  
  
I’m not being fair; I’m sorry, pet. You have already done a lot of what I wanted you to do. You took my gifts, didn’t you? You took my call, you came to my house tonight. I mean, it took what — two weeks? Well done, Jim, have a lolly. But oh, _no_ …The mean man is hiding the lolly, running away. Oh well, next time then. You make me up my game, Sherlock, that’s all you ever do. I had such plans for tonight: talking about Moran, scrambling your brain about that insect. You’re so easy, God; it makes me feel sorry for you sometimes. Did you live under a stone all this time? How can you not learn anything about people? You work with people! Always underestimating the value of knowing about them. Or maybe you just can’t. Maybe you’ll be forever the twelve-year-old. It does things to me, that. Your frozen innocence. It’s like taking your virginity all over again every time. Just thinking about it now makes me want to come right over, put a few well-chosen words in your ear— Oh, fine, why not, let’s be crude. Put a gun to your head—and fuck you until you bleed.  
  
Boring! What else is new?  
  
John saw it, too. The twelve-year old. I read his blog. It’s a stupid blog; he’s so bad at it. He doesn’t get you, Sherlock. His pathetic little chickpea of a brain simply cannot comprehend what you do, what he needs to write about. But he’s picked up on some things, I’ll give him that. Your delicious fragility. You…are like the finest porcelain china, my love, and I am for ever shaking with the thrill of keeping it unblemished, holding it against the light to make it almost translucent, gliding my fingers over it, crying with the perfection of a surface so even, so smooth, so cool, it tricks the brain into doubting the sensations are real.  
  
That or smashing it into pieces, then stepping on them, one by one, feeling the crunch under my shoes, feeling it in my teeth and in my groin, turning it to salt, then to sand, then to dust — then inhaling it. Can you imagine? My lungs collapsing, physically full with you?  
  
I know, I know — I’m getting maudlin, fawning, clichéd, but I’m allowed after tonight. So many resources, so much effort, such _partiality_. I am going out of my way for you; I always have, you ungrateful little bitch. Sherlock Holmes: The name on Jim Moriarty’s short straw.  
  
Today again — the time, the energy I spent on your visit. It costs me business. It costs me self-respect, because I know very well what’s going on. This, all this, isn’t because I really need a partner. This is because I want one, and I want you, no other; there has never been another and there never will be. I've had enough of Sebastian Moran. I want to be free of him. I want to feel myself again, Jim Moriarty, and then I want you to be my queen, my love. Until we live happily ever after or one day I get fed up and blow both our brains out. Same difference.  
  
I get scared sometimes, Sherlock — shhh, don’t tell. I want you to hold me, baby. Why wouldn’t you? I get so scared that this scheme of mine, which has taken years to put together, will actually work. Then what? What if it’s not good enough? What if the fun fades quickly? What if one day you stop resisting, you give in, _become_ my queen? What if the sun keeps shining?  
  
Please, just— Please. Don’t disappoint me. I’m almost grateful you picked up your own pet, that stray you have living with you. It adds a new component; it makes you a new formula. Tonight — was that him, because of him? Dear God, I hope not—that would be properly insulting. But I can be reasonable; I can appreciate what’s been given to me. A drop of extra-unpredictability: good, good.  
  
I must remember to thank John Watson.

 

 

_Chapter Eleven_

  
Sherlock walks down a suburban London street at four o’clock in the morning without an ounce of concern about his safety. He is cold; he is very cold and that is all — but this cold is not really new.  
  
The first time Jim did _that_ was a month after they met. Sherlock had been using for the better part of that month. He wasn’t even sure what was going on between the two of them, when one evening Jim invited him to spend the night, saying that he’d come up with something Sherlock might find distracting.  
  
Sherlock tried to imagine spending the night physically close to another person. Of course, he had long ago read up on sexuality and there was substantial data to suggest asexual people enjoyed physical affection. The examples given most often included stroking, caressing, and being held by the other person. Somewhere in Sherlock’s drugged mind there’d been eagerness to test himself in this new set of circumstances.  
  
He’d already had opportunities, finally, to test his hypothetical asexuality and to confirm it. He and Jim had had plenty of sex. Sherlock had quickly learnt how to take Jim in his mouth, as well as how and when to use his tongue, his teeth, or his throat. He’d learnt how to keep his lubricated thighs clasped tightly just so, in order to provide the optimum friction for Jim’s penis and how to relax to allow Jim to penetrate him with less discomfort and less time for preparation. Doing what Jim directed him was eminently sensible because, as Jim himself pointed out, listening to the other person meant giving them more pleasure, more quickly. And since sex wasn’t something that Sherlock was keen to draw out, he was a most conscientious pupil.  
  
When he was lucid enough.  
  
Sherlock preferred being high during sex — a tendency that had completely evaded his attention at the time. It meant he didn’t have to think; his body went through the motions, some already becoming familiar, others new — wherever Jim’s fancy took him. Once or twice over the years, after prolonged periods of time with no sleep, Sherlock’s mind, frantic with exhaustion and sawing through whatever it met in its wake, came across some questions, halted — then circled around them. Questions such as where _exactly_ Jim’s fancy had taken him in those early days. Because the thing is, Sherlock still doesn’t remember everything. Most of the times when he came down from his high he was able to reconstruct what had happened by the soreness of different parts of his body, or by stains, marks, thousands of other little exhibits over and around him — sex was so _evident_. But there were occasions when his examinations were inconclusive, and others still when he hadn’t wanted to pursue further investigation.  
  
Anyway, why should it matter what his body was doing if there was no record of it? If the record was buried, irretrievable, or compromised?  
  
Although a lot had happened in those first weeks, one thing, predictably, hadn’t. No matter the type of stimulation, the environment, or other factors such as chemicals, timing, or general physical condition — not once had Sherlock managed to have an erection. This brought about the first of only three times Jim ever shouted at him, in that particular case that “not interested in sex isn’t a fucking option”. Sherlock was completely taken aback by Jim’s reaction, but more so by the formidable change that had swept over this thin man with the musical tilt to his voice and had transformed him into a raging stranger, whose eyes bulged to the point of Sherlock actually worrying about his optic nerves.  
  
The memory makes Sherlock’s shoulders harden, as if his coat has pieces of concrete for shoulder pads. Jim’s face darkening so much, twisting the way it did, his mouth almost spitting in its inability to produce a full sentence. Then something was happening. Jim stopped speaking. He stared at Sherlock, face and neck turning dark red, subtly vibrating with tension; his eyes darkened to black. Sherlock felt his own eyes unable to reach Jim’s, to penetrate them. It was as if their accessibility was held back by a tremendous force, as if Jim’s and Sherlock’s eyes were identical poles of two separate magnets, their looks unable to come close, to touch…  
  
And then Jim’s face cleared. Within seconds he was himself again. He apologised to Sherlock and explained that it had just been very hurtful for him that Sherlock wouldn’t want him, but that he understood, and that he—  
  
Sherlock doesn’t quite remember what Jim gave as a reason for his outburst. Jim talked and talked, and Sherlock felt his mind turn to a jellyfish left in the sun, a feeling to repeat itself over the entire time they spent together. Maybe he deleted that particular memory, although he doesn’t remember doing that.  
  
Or maybe some memories deleted themselves.  
  
Sherlock shivers, tugs his coat to wrap it around himself tighter — rather inefficiently, because it’s already fitted around his upper body to the last stitch — and keeps walking.  
  
What he does remember was that Jim sounded so logical, as always. It had been one of the things that made Sherlock stick around in the very beginning. Well, given Sherlock’s state at the time, not so much stick around as fail to be bothered to leave. Consequently, he observed with some distant bewilderment Jim making a fuss about him as he created space for himself in Sherlock’s life. Jim had instantly demonstrated that he wasn’t stupid. There was also the sex which meant completely new, useful data. Its acquisition didn’t seem to require Sherlock to put up with too much discomfort, especially while he was using. The shouting did startle him, but Sherlock just took it as further evidence that sex was a big deal for ordinary people. What startled him the most was Jim not just sticking around, but considering closeness. _Spend the night_ was a completely unprecedented offer in Sherlock’s adult life.  
  
On the occasions that he and Jim had had sex Sherlock hadn’t felt inclined to be physically close to him, but one of them had always been quick to remove himself from close proximity, so there was potential to explore. As for Jim providing anything really distracting, Sherlock felt very dubious about it and explicitly told him so.  
  
How many hours it must have taken Jim to think it up, do the research, and finally produce it Sherlock couldn’t imagine. He can still see it now in his mind’s eye — the drawing board. Odd that he should remember it then in view of the fact that he only saw it just a couple of hours ago.  
  
That first time he walked into Jim’s lavish open-plan living room…There it was in its centre, the board: big, tilted, perfectly lit, and occupied by the large architectural drawing of a beautiful Gothic cathedral. _Hundreds_ of details, woven into each other to produce a cohesive image, grand and awesome, already enough to capture Sherlock’s breath. His brain exulted at seeing such complexity, all of it governed by the implacable force of spatial logic. But all the while his artistic streak was humming with delight, too.  
  
Music is patterns, duration of pauses and length of sound waves. They can be all broken down to the exquisite exactness of numbers. Only then music flows over the rim of science and down into the chasm of Sherlock’s very soul, conquering what hasn’t already surrendered to the mathematical sweep of his violin bow.  
  
That night at Jim’s was the first time Sherlock experienced the unique similarity between music and architecture, head bending low under the focal light to look upon this new world and take on a quest for the acquisition of all its thrilling data.  
  
But that turned out to be just the starter. Jim offered the main course then, telling Sherlock that in the drawing were hidden clues from the investigation of an unsolved murder from the first part of the twentieth century. That was all the information Sherlock had at his disposal; no questions allowed. He could try and identify the case and — “if you’re up to it” — attempt to solve it.  
  
It took Sherlock an entire day to do it and it was one of the most spectacularly all-consuming experiences of his entire life. Nothing else existed but his mind at work. He will never forget the exhilaration when he was able to identify the case — 1931, French Indochina, the Ho Tai Mi double murder — but not because he was successful or because he knew. Because this was _only_ the beginning — Sherlock had already been stretched enough to feel a pleasant burn and he hadn’t even started on the actual solving of the case!  
  
It was a long, delicious main course. And at the end of it, it turned out that there was dessert, too — although Sherlock didn’t have the sweet tooth. Jim did.  
  
Sherlock was still shaking with the firework effects from laying it all out when Jim dropped on his knees and pressed his face against Sherlock’s crotch. “Keep talking,” he murmured, and Sherlock stammered for a moment, but then complied. He went on both talking and stammering—at the sensation of himself growing hard for the first time in his life, at the vacuum of Jim’s mouth, at the unpredictable swipes of Jim’s tongue over his glans, until gradually all sensations started streaming into one with the flow of Sherlock’s deductions. Something clicked in Sherlock’s brain and he understood it then, this experience that made people so very irrational.  
  
(Perhaps the best he ever will. He certainly feels very far away from understanding it now, but that’s not exclusive to sex. Sherlock can’t feel his fingers at the moment; at least his feet are still carrying him forward.)  
  
Sherlock stopped talking at some point, the connections of the case just shimmering in his mind like an iridescent spider’s net, beautiful and perfectly stable. Then the net started vibrating, brilliant light running through every string of it as Sherlock felt his abdomen muscles contract and his penis begin to pulse.  
  
To say it was an odd moment would be like calling life before Internet dull. The real oddness, a different kind of oddness, and one that Sherlock never managed to comprehend — hasn’t tried to, his whole being always recoiling from the memory — happened afterwards. Jim somehow dragged Sherlock to the sofa and flopped them both onto it. Sherlock felt suddenly stuck in earnest. Something unfathomable and dark swept over him; it made him want to curl into a foetal position, his mind desperately trying to find some sense, some direction, some light — but all Sherlock felt was emptiness, boundless and inexplicable, with a single question echoing through it: _And now?_ The answer was the only kind of echo emptiness could ever produce: _Nothing, nothing, nothing_...  
  
With enormous effort Sherlock tried to focus. He observed the stain on Jim’s shirt where some semen must have dropped; looked at the shape of the mottle there and deduced how Jim’s thumb must have pressed over it, at what angle, with what strength, the consistency of the semen. He visualized in slow motion Jim’s thumb dragging the drop along and smudging it, integrating it into the structure of the material. He felt around his own genitalia, touched his pubic hair, noting dampness but lack of stickiness — so, saliva and the air coming out through Jim’s nostrils. He wondered how someone so much smaller could unfold to such size and have such a tight grip. And all the while there’d still been residual electrical flashes, galvanizing the spider’s net behind Sherlock’s eyes for the briefest instant.  
  
He realized he had grown very cold and clammy. Jim was murmuring something but Sherlock couldn’t hear for the life of him. He tried breathing very deeply. He felt like he wasn’t even there, not fully, reminiscent of the way he had felt once or twice in a dream. His body having dimensions whilst simultaneously not existing, but either way with Sherlock completely incapable of doing _anything_.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t remember what happened afterwards. Something _must_ have happened that night; they must have talked, eaten perhaps, done something. Time can’t just elapse, unfilled with events. Then there was the whole night, impossible to account for. Sherlock’s next clear memory is from the morning after when he woke up in Jim’s bed and was still feeling cold, despite Jim pressing into his back. Jim woke up seconds after Sherlock. They didn’t talk about the night before. Sherlock didn’t want to tell Jim about it. What he did try telling him, what he tried…sharing, he doesn’t know why, was about his experience with the case, illuminated and _good_. About how he had thought he might now understand what pleasure must feel like to Jim. Jim smiled and told him he was glad, agreed with him about the similarity of their experiences, but pointed out that Sherlock’s was of course abnormal, because most people experienced things like Jim.  
  
In the light of day, Sherlock was able to fully appreciate what Jim had given him with the drawing and the astounding amount of work he must have put into it, in addition to revealing his quite extraordinary brain. Sherlock immediately started hoping Jim would do it again. Meanwhile Jim, eyes closed and a serene smile still playing on his lips, just listened to Sherlock speak.  
  
Strangely enough, there is a single little detail from that morning that Sherlock can’t see the usefulness of keeping, but there it is, always surviving every mental reorganization: Sherlock asking Jim to bring another blanket although it was July. The blanket was cashmere, dark green with dark grey stripes, and it smelled funny, like it’d never been used.  
  
Sherlock can feel his breath changing. He fights to keep it in his lungs, to make the blood pump, make the brain command his feet to keep walking — and then he fails. He can’t keep walking. He stumbles to the fence of the nearest house and props onto it, bending over and placing his hands on his knees. Somewhere in him a voice tells him to take his mobile out and call, call someone, call John.  
  
Jim asked about John tonight. Asked about how they met, about the cabbie, about whether Sherlock thought John would stay for another six months or if he’d move out earlier. He said John was nice.  
  
Sherlock can’t call John.  
  
He blinks quickly at his mobile phone’s screen, then slides and slides lower along the fence wall, until he sits on the ground. He drops his head between his legs to get more blood flow to his brain. In a second he dials the number that Mycroft insisted Sherlock always have on speed dial—and waits.

 

 

_Chapter Twelve_

  
Predictably, John takes Mycroft’s advice too much to heart. He is positive that if this was two months ago he’d have found broaching the subject about Sherlock’s personal life an easier task. As it is now, with a stack of masturbatory fantasies behind his back, talking to Sherlock about his relationship with another man is too close to home for John. He isn’t just worried about the cans of worms such a conversation might open. John finds himself profoundly at a loss about how to evolve this, how to navigate something so treacherous. In addition, there never seems to be a good moment to even start and the more the unspoken grows, the more daunting the prospect of speaking becomes.  
  
At first John enjoys the Sunday they spend after Mycroft’s gone and Sherlock returns. Sherlock’s face is flushed, probably from the brisk walk in the cold air, and John sorely wishes he’d gone out with him, maybe had a walk in Regent’s Park together. Just quiet, not talking; just the two of them. The rest of the day is wonderful, uneventful, normal. A mellow sort of day, the kind that in hindsight has a tinge of ominous nostalgia.  
  
Because it goes downhill from there. John returns to work and Sherlock returns to checking his mobile. John can feel something stretch between them and the best word to describe it, ironically, is _distance_. Space. Physical, measurable — in the number of hours they spend together, or rather the hours that they don’t; in the way they begin to sit, farther and farther apart. John can’t recall the last time they had an accidental brush of shoulders. In reality, he is aware that only a small number of days have passed, but his perception begs to differ, insists it’s much longer, a month at the least.  
  
But the distance is there in a less material way, too. In the way John feels the closeness between him and Sherlock disappear like the pixels on those old games disappeared into Pac-Man’s mouth. He is afraid that one day soon there’ll be nothing left and that he will still have done nothing. He feels frustrated with himself for his helplessness, but he’s never been the kind of bloke who sits another bloke down and talks to him about relationship stuff. Sadly, compared to Sherlock, John is verging on the likes of daily talk show guests, spilling their guts out in public. Because Sherlock is a marble statue of inapproachability. One that would break the laws of nature and bring stone to life, if only so it could frown in bewilderment and distaste at the prospect of discussing feelings.  
  
John goes through his hours on auto-pilot, like most people do when they desperately hope that tomorrow, _tomorrow_ they will wake up to find that the world has somehow righted itself and returned to the last saved version of when it was okay. At work he gets distracted for patches of time, but then there’s always the abrupt clash with reality, making John flinch as if he touched an ulcer in his mouth he’d forgotten about. The realization startles him every time: How can things be changing so much when there’s nothing really happening?  
  
On Friday that stops being true.  
  
If there has been one constant about John’s home life it is that as long as there isn’t a case, John can go anywhere he wants, do anything he wants, and know that back home Sherlock is always _in_. Making his usual messes, browsing on laptops, his presence confidently vanquishing every corner and crevice of their shared space and making it the comfortable hammock John can fall back into.  
  
Sherlock, the home maker. John would laugh if he wasn’t scared where that might leave him.  
  
Well, now Sherlock goes out, apparently. One of those text messages arrives on Friday night. John doesn’t know if there were others during the week while he was at work, although he did check Sherlock’s coat and shoes for signs of recent damp — the evidence was neither here nor there. This time John is at home. Sherlock’s phone makes a sound at the unsettling hour of ten fifteen at night and it quickly gets clear that there’s something different this time. Because Sherlock dresses up. He puts on his tight black shirt and one of his charcoal grey suits and God knows John is clueless about bespoke tailoring, but even he can tell the difference between Sherlock’s everyday suits and his special ones. This one just looks…sharp, in the provocative line of the material along Sherlock’s thighs, in the bold lapels, in the way the collar brings out Sherlock’s throat like an offering for sacrifice. Just before Sherlock leaves directly through the kitchen — “Off out.” — he runs a hand through his hair. The gesture is completely unconscious, because Sherlock’s eyes are already a mile away, but it’s there. And then he really is off out.  
  
He comes back at five in the morning. John’s imagination goes haywire with images of what Sherlock might look like in the darkness downstairs, speckles of his debauchery barely glinting all over him as if reflecting the streetlight.  
  
Or, like John’s mind supplies with some vestige of common sense, he could look just like himself, because he is Sherlock and he doesn’t do debauchery, full stop.  
  
***  
  
On the next day John goes to work bleary-eyed and distracted, which earns him a couple of nosey glances from the new girl at reception — John isn’t vain enough to delude himself this is a different kind of interest — and a gentle enquiry whether he is okay by the security guard. John nods, smiles, gives an affirmative, when his phone vibrates in his pocket.  
  
The message is from Mycroft and reads, _Have you talked to Sherlock yet?_  
  
For one blissful, fuck-it-all moment John toys with the idea of typing _Piss off, Mycroft_ or even better — obtuseness would annoy Mycroft more — _What about?_ He takes a deep breath through his nose and types, _No_ , fully expecting Mycroft’s reply to wind him up further. Instead, it makes John remember that he hadn’t had breakfast or much fluid this morning and that he should never, ever forget who Mycroft is. His stomach spasms unpleasantly when he reads the simple, _Do it when you get back. Please, John_. John stands in the middle of the corridor, sensing the movement of air as people go around him, and looks at the screen, fingers arrested over the keys. Eventually he slides the phone into his pocket without answering and heads back out for a cup of very strong coffee and something to eat.  
  
His return from work is painfully awkward which isn’t surprising at all. For his own part, John has managed to work himself up so much throughout his shift that he’s feeling his scalp physically prickling. Around mid-afternoon he briefly considered calling Mycroft and _demanding_ he tell him right that second what was going on, what prompted that message. Something must have happened. Mycroft’s timing and his wording can’t possibly be random. But John knew he would likely just get irritated without the benefit of extracting anything useful and the last thing he needed before going home was to tense up further.  
  
As he climbs the steps to their flat he doesn’t even know whether he should open his mouth at all in the next hour or so. It’s too much, all of it. When did it become too much?  
  
Sherlock is sitting alone and quiet in his chair, doing absolutely nothing. His pallor is even more pallid than usual. His eyes meet John’s at his entry before downright jumping away, and John suddenly has to fight himself from grabbing the coat hanger and whacking it against the wall until it breaks and sends splinters flying everywhere. Startled by the viciousness of the urge, he mumbles his hello and goes straight to his bedroom, before coming down for a long, hot shower.  
  
He stands under the spray and has a peculiar image behind his closed eyes: that his skull is like a strainer turned upside down and the water will come through the small holes, gradually filling up John’s head, until…he doesn’t know what. It’s just an image that he hurries to dispel by opening his eyes. He watches rivulets of water run along the wall, thinks of the stray few drops he spotted running down Sherlock’s hand after Sherlock used it to gently push John’s wet fringe away. And just like that tears spring to John’s eyes, leaving him gasping, gasping and dismayed. He closes his eyes again, wills the tears away, and hits the wall with the side of his fist once, twice, hitting back at the yearning, too. At the realization how utterly touch-starved his life has become. How Sherlock-starved John is.  
  
After a good half hour he finally braves a come back to the sitting room with a sandwich and a beer. Wordlessly, he sits on the sofa. Sherlock hasn’t moved and John doesn’t want him to move, wouldn’t want to move himself, quite frankly. But Sherlock turns his face to look at him and he is right there; to not look at him would be to declare a war and all fight has gone out of John. He meets Sherlock’s eyes and squints, taken aback. He wants to move closer and examine if Sherlock’s eyes are really as murky as they appear. Because this is Sherlock and regardless of whether he’s severely underslept, or overworked, or depressed even, his eyes are always, always clear. They are John’s bloody touchstone, that’s what they are; his touchstone of clarity when London becomes a city of fumes or life becomes a tableau of blurred misfortunes — through it all Sherlock’s eyes shine.  
  
All Sherlock does is ask John how John’s day was. It’s as if he’s giving John a line and John doesn’t have the script in front of him, but he damn well accepts the part for the moment, because he needs that. They need that — they need to be normal again, Sherlock and John, in their flat. John strings some sentences together and the part of him that directs gives him a quick applause. Carried on inertia he asks after Sherlock’s day and Sherlock delivers a few well-chosen, well-acted words on his research on the properties of asbestos. John hums and nods.  
  
The silence between the two of them afterwards isn’t staged. It takes some time for it to start floating down very slowly, very gently, but then it’s there: Quietness lays over them like the softest eiderdown and suddenly John feels anguished wistfulness erupt in him, needy and tired, unstoppable in its spontaneity.  
  
“Where did you go last night?” he asks. 

 

 

_Chapter Thirteen_

  
One of the grandest illusions that John Watson projects into the world is that he is manageable. For people who go through life ignorant of anything that can’t be seen or achieved with minimum effort — so, most people — he probably appears as a spineless shadow in the background. But even those select few who bother to _think_ have John down as the kind of individual with enough character to be his own person, but also made of the flexible stuff that allows you to bend to the shape of your own desire — provided you stay within some boring norm. To that Sherlock has a double objection: one, because he’s seen John go beyond anything that would be considered the norm of human conduct and two, because this really isn’t who John is.  
  
John Watson does follow, amiably or sometimes with a grumble — until, unfailingly, he does his own thing. He shoots cabbies; he moves in with you. He writes his blog exactly the way he sees fit; he doesn’t leave the flatshare.  
  
He takes the lines you give him — and then he goes and invents his own lines.  
  
“Where did you go last night?” he asks and of course! Of course John is the one to say, _I give you, Reality, thy name_. Not Mycroft, not Jim, not even Sherlock. John Watson, trickster extraordinaire.  
  
Sherlock hasn’t got anything to flip and turn into a shield, crouch, hide behind it. He’s been teetering on the edge of staying rational for nearly eighteen hours. It’s a long time to teeter. Aiding his depletion has been the battle on the sidelines. It’s been going on for eight of these eighteen hours and Sherlock can’t even remember why he’s fighting it anymore. He is afraid to close his eyes lest the image of the syringe flash behind his eyelids, an enemy victorious.  
  
This, right here, is why there is no place for sentiment in a sane person’s life.  
  
John is insane as well by that definition, and probably by a number of others, such as still being here at all. Insane to ask the question and insane if he thinks he’ll get an answer. Sherlock gets up from his chair and feels the room sway. In his peripheral vision he catches John’s figure tense on the sofa.  
  
“Sherlock?” John says, voice concerned yet firm.  
  
Sherlock heads to his bedroom. It’s not a long walk, thank God.  
  
He hears John’s steps behind him.  
  
“Where are you going?” John says. “Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock knows it would be more productive if he told John something, but he can’t imagine opening his mouth.  
  
He pushes the door of the bedroom open and turns to close it, only to collide with John. Who is incredibly short — Sherlock is _amazed_ how short John is. Short and thin-lipped, forehead lined with concern, anger…Fear? No, the fear is in the lines around the eyes. No, no — in the eyes.  
  
The two of them look at each other at this close proximity and for a few seconds no one moves or says a thing. Sherlock wishes he could press a pause button somewhere, freeze them like that, because bizarrely this is the least ill he’s felt since last night.  
  
John just shakes his head and spreads his arms in silent enquiry.  
  
Sherlock looks back at him, helpless.  
  
“Sherlock,” John says, peering at Sherlock’s face. “What’s going on? I had this text from Mycroft…”  
  
Sherlock feels anger and hurt hiss to life like the blue burst of a flame.  
  
“Of course you did. Texting each other, are we? Keeping an eye on the freak?”  
  
John frowns. “What? No— What? Forget about Mycroft. What’s going on? You’re acting strange.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Sherlock says automatically.  
  
“Yes, I can see.” John sounds as if he’s talking to a bird.  
  
When has Sherlock heard John talking to birds?  
  
“Listen,” John says. “Can we just— Can you talk to me, please? I don’t know what’s going on, but I—”  
  
John scratches the spot above his right eyebrow and looks at his shoes. He is nervous, which means that Sherlock isn’t an idiot; well, no more than usual.  
  
“Listen,” John starts again, eyes lifting. “Are you okay? After last night?” Sherlock’s face must have done something, because John hurries to add, “You don’t have to give me the details. I mean, it’s your business, but I just— You don’t look well.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Sherlock repeats. He finds that he can’t trust himself to say anything else. He doesn’t want to say anything else but he doesn’t want John to leave either. It would be perfect if they stayed here under the door frame, one in the corridor, the other in the room. Until it was proper night-time and Sherlock leant against the doorframe, maybe finally slept, while John remained exactly where he is now. Or maybe John could sleep as well. He is a soldier; he should be able to sleep standing.  
  
A sigh brings Sherlock back.  
  
“Fine,” John says, bitterness loading his vowels, which does not bode well for Sherlock’s secret sleeping arrangements. “I can’t make you— I don’t want to force you to speak to me. Just…Forget it.”John makes a motion to turn.  
  
“Wait,” Sherlock shoots.  
  
John stops immediately and looks up at Sherlock. Sherlock lowers his head against his better judgement, but he _has_ to study that face, because it is precisely the face that makes John _John_.  
  
John’s lips full up as they relax and part just the slightest. John breathes through them and lets Sherlock watch him.  
  
“You’re creeping me out a bit, just so you know,” he says in a moment. “Can we, please, sit down and talk like normal people?”  
  
“What about?” Sherlock retorts, unmoving. He isn’t sitting anywhere.  
  
“Sherlock, don’t play stupid with me! We’re flatmates. We’re friends. I’d like to know if there’s—” John takes a breath and his eyes darken. “I bring my girlfriends here and although you’re not the most courteous person in the world, I still introduce them to you. If, um, if you’re getting back with your…ex—”  
  
“I’m not getting back with Jim,” Sherlock interrupts, puzzled. Why would John think that? Hold on. How does John even know—  
  
“Oh, you should move in with my brother, John,” Sherlock says. “I don’t know why you bother talking to me at all when you can just have a nice chit-chat with him.”  
  
“Can you just stop being such a prick?” John sounds irritated. “Mycroft hasn’t told me more than what I’ve figured out, and okay, maybe I shouldn’t have talked to him, but you’re not exactly inviting conversations, are you?” John rubs his forehead. “The only thing Mycroft told me that I didn’t know was that things weren’t great when it ended between you and Jim. So now that you’ve started checking your phone and acting all secretive—”  
  
“I’m not being secretive,” Sherlock counters by habit, then halts. He was being secretive, probably.  
  
“Come on, Sherlock, “John says. “You’re coming and going at all hours. You’re glued to your phone. You haven’t said a word to me about—You know what, apart from that case last week, we’ve not talked at all!”  
  
“We talk. We talked yesterday about the toothbrushes,” Sherlock points out, confused.  
  
“I don’t mean it literally, you idiot.” John shakes his head. “Look. I’ve lived with you. I can tell when something’s going on, and…I worry. About you. If things didn’t work out— If Jim hurt you the last time—”  
  
Sherlock’s breath trips over his words, they come out so quickly.  
  
“Jim didn’t hurt me. What, because it’s me you just assume that— What? He broke my heart?” Sherlock can feel his eyebrows move with offended mockery. John is staring at him, but Sherlock can’t stop and analyze now—the words have won and are pouring out.  
  
“ _I_ left _him_.” He pronounces each of them perfectly. “I ‘broke his heart’. And in case you think I’m so incompetent that I got it all wrong — I didn’t. These are his words. I was irresponsible and cruel — again, not my own naïve interpretation, but a perspective somewhat closer to yours, because Jim, like you, is tediously normal in that respect.”  
  
John’s face has turned to ash and the sight makes Sherlock sickly vindicated. John followed him to here. John insisted on bursting the blister.  
  
Sherlock feels his mouth fill with ash, too. This must be the cruelty Jim used to talk about.  
  
The thought snaps something in him.  
  
“Do you know why I left him, John?” Sherlock asks. “Because I got bored with him.” He’s brought his face closer to John and breathes out the word bored with tenderness, designed to cut. “I didn’t even know I was bored; I just started avoiding him. He was the one to make me understand…” Sherlock straightens. “I don’t do feelings and I don’t do relationships. They’re messy and they hurt people; _I_ hurt people. I can’t have any of that…clutter in my head. I need my head clear and I need my focus for my work.”  
  
John is quiet but then, through a fog, Sherlock sees him nod once.  
  
“Right. So what are you doing seeing Jim again, then?”  
  
Sherlock isn’t left with much to do except draw himself to his full height. “It’s not— I’m not seeing him again.”  
  
“Yeah, it looked like it last night.”  
  
“I didn’t go there to see him. It was for something else,” Sherlock says.  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
“You wouldn’t understand.”  
  
John gives the curt nod again. “’Course not. Did you sleep with him?”  
  
This time there won’t be getting up from the ring where the logic of Sherlock’s argument has been flailing, trying to keep its balance. Memories from the night before start shouting at intentions about the night before, and all the while John is waiting, face drawn and small.  
  
Sherlock swallows. “Why does it always have to be about sex?”  
  
“It isn’t always about sex.” John’s turn to say each word with sharp, quiet distinction. “But when someone tells you he doesn’t want a relationship and he is not getting back together with his ex, while he dresses up and goes out and spends the night with that ex, sex becomes—”  
  
“How did you know I was at Jim’s,” Sherlock interrupts, curious and only in part stalling.  
  
“I’m not stupid, Sherlock.”  
  
“No, you’re not,” Sherlock says absent-mindedly, because with his question a whole new room of wonderings has popped into existence in his mental quarters. “Why do you want to know about the sex?”  
  
John’s head somehow retreats and he straightens his posture. “I told you. I want to make sure you’re okay, because, you know — we’re friends.”  
  
“No, that’s not how you ask; it’s not how you check on me.” Sherlock lowers his head and squints. “What’s it to you?”  
  
John purses his lips and stares back defiantly. Too defiantly. So not just curiosity. Not just concern. Or is it just concern? Damn it if Sherlock would know even if it was.  
  
John folds himself into a more compact form. He blinks at Sherlock, something evidently going on, because his mouth is open, but empty.  
  
And then his wonderful, his so-very John-temperament makes an appearance.  
  
“Fine!” He erupts, face reddening. “You know what—do whatever you like! I’m not going to— I’m fed up with it, Sherlock, time and time again to force myself—”  
  
Sherlock watches in fascination as if it’s a film, as if this is a recorded lesson on John.  
  
John, who has stopped, is visibly trying to compose himself.  
  
“I’m not going to assume we’re friends anymore, then. Right?” he says. “That thing you said, about the relationships…I get it. Only I don’t see how you can live with someone— Well, I suppose _you_ can.” John ends abruptly, voice close to choking — and just like that the film strip ends abruptly, too, leaving the screen blank.  
  
“John,” Sherlock says, not knowing how it goes from here. He feels as if something’s choking _him_.  
  
John looks at him, face completely unreadable, and Sherlock just knew it. He knew he’d lose his blueprint of clarity, but he didn’t think it would be when he needed it most.  
  
“We are friends,” he says and feels the familiar burn of relief that speaking the truth always brings to his lungs.  
  
John’s face instantly softens.  
  
“Then tell me. Sherlock, I’m not you, but I know you. Did anything…What’s going on?”  
  
“We had dinner.” Sherlock blurts out a fact, because nothing is ever as safe as the facts. “Then Jim showed me a drawing. Jim’s an architect. He used to do this thing for me…He would work on a project and he would hide the clues of a murder case in the drawing. Or he would text me a picture or the address of a building and a few words only, and I would solve his riddle. It’s a game we— It used to be a game we played.”  
  
John is listening like his life depends on it. He nods: I _understand_.  
  
_Do you, John?_  
  
“Last night he invited me over,” Sherlock says. “I knew he had a new puzzle for me, we had spoken…We had dinner. I looked at the drawing. I started working on it, then— I—”  
  
Well, it was always going to get to here, wasn’t it?  
  
John shakes his head lightly, prompting. His face is tension and focus in equal parts.  
  
Sherlock feels his shoulders sink. He runs a hand through his hair and tries, since he’s got here anyway.  
  
“Then he— When we were together, there were certain things…to do with sex,” Sherlock says and quickly darts his eyes to John’s face. It’s still focused, it’s still tense. Not a muscle twitches. Sherlock feels oddly discouraged by it.  
  
“Jim tried to—”  
  
How to explain to John? Each scene is like a separate partition for a single instrument in a musical piece. Jim, unbuttoning Sherlock’s shirt and tucking it out, then leaving it on Sherlock, open. Running his fingers along the panels of his chest. Brushing Sherlock’s nipples. Slowly leaning down and closing his lips over one, never letting go of Sherlock’s eyes, his own eyes humourous, naughty. Teasing Sherlock — his nipple, his mind, _him_. Then another instrument, another partition. Sherlock’s mouth touching Jim’s under the guidance of Jim’s hand, bearing down on Sherlock’s neck. Impossible to resist.  
  
But Sherlock did resist, didn’t he? Although not the way he could control it.  
  
“I ran away,” he says. “That is, I left.” He clarifies just in case.  
  
John’s lips have almost disappeared, but his jaw has become very pronounced.  
  
“Why?” he asks.  
  
Sherlock frowns. _Why?_  
  
But now that he’s finally heard the question out loud, the answer arrives to him with perfect simplicity.  
  
“Because I didn’t want to be there,” Sherlock says, perhaps loading the sentence with too much reproach to John’s intelligence. Especially since Sherlock was the late developer here.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Not important. It’s over now.”  
  
John raises his eyebrows. John Watson. The quietest, most beguiling menace anyone would ever have the misfortune to encounter.  
  
“Over?” John repeats, voice its lowest. “Over. What did he do?”  
  
“Anyway, that was all very—”  
  
“Sherlock. _What_ is over?”  
  
“I don’t see why we need to keep discussing—”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sherlock yells, frustration and panic bursting forth and out at last. “I don’t know! How the hell should I know when everything is such a mess?! I don’t know how you people can live like that, with all those…feelings.” The word is finally spat with all the resentment it deserves. “But I can’t, I can’t— I just…I can’t.”  
  
John is watching him, wide-eyed and furious, and Sherlock doesn’t even know what about. He tries to calm his breathing and suddenly feels very light-headed. His shoulder bumps the door frame as Sherlock drops against it for support. His fingers begin to feel icy.  
  
John moves to him in an instant, catches his chin as his eyes flick between Sherlock’s.  
  
“Get inside.” He commands. “Come on.”  
  
He manoeuvres Sherlock in the room and towards the bed, not letting go of him. Sherlock lets his fingers hover over John’s lower arm, then wrap around it as Sherlock arranges himself along the bed.  
  
John swipes a quick hand across his forehead, then checks Sherlock’s pulse on his wrist. He lets go and stares at Sherlock for a moment, which is when Sherlock discovers that he hasn’t removed his hand from John’s arm. He drops it on the bed, the tip of his small finger brushing John’s jeans.  
  
John still gazes at him. Sherlock has the feeling his face is only a suitable place for John to park his eyes, while he’s thinking.  
  
“Right,” John says at last. “You,” he drags the word and points at Sherlock, “are staying here and having some tea. You’re getting into your PJs and then you _will_ sleep even if you have to take three pills. I hate it that you’re an ex-addict, you know that?” John says conversationally. “I hate it that I always have to worry what you’re taking.” He tilts his head and Sherlock realizes they’ve been holding each other’s eyes for ages now.  
  
His mouth goes a bit dry.  
  
“I want sugar in my tea,” he says.  
  
John doesn’t seem to be able to look away from him.  
  
“You’re not getting any,” he answers and quickly licks his lips. Sherlock feels his pulse speed up again, but this time the dizziness makes his limbs tingle almost pleasantly. He is sitting after all.  
  
John gets up from the bed and the mattress ripples under Sherlock’s bottom.  
  
“Change,” John says and leaves the room.  
  
Sherlock listens to the sounds coming from the kitchen and starts unbuttoning his shirt.

 

 

_Chapter Fourteen_

  
His question about Sherlock’s whereabouts the previous night is still ringing in John’s ears when he is _flooded_ with relief: He’s finally found his tongue in his own bloody mouth! He’s finally going to have some answers.  
  
_Wrong_ , Sherlock would say. That would be the case if John were dealing with a normal person and not with a mad, infantile genius who flees the metaphorical scene of the crime like he would never flee any real one.  
  
Well, John is having none of it. For one thing, _he is having none of it_ , damn it. For another, in the brief seconds Sherlock spends walking from his chair to the kitchen, he looks like a somnambulist. Something’s definitely off. By the time John’s caught up with him at his bedroom door the chase is one of concern more than doggedness.  
  
They collide under the doorframe — Sherlock turns swiftly to close the door and John finds himself with his nose almost pressed against Sherlock’s chest. John takes a step back, unsure how to proceed. Sherlock is blocking the entrance to his space and John’s instinct is to respect that. On the other hand Sherlock hasn’t slammed the door in John’s face and there’s something to be read from that. Sherlock doesn’t normally refrain from shutting people out, in any sense of the word.  
  
“Sherlock, what’s going on?” John asks, and in a flash it occurs to him that if Sherlock knew there was a solid reason for this intrusion, it might bring the tension down. “I had this text from Mycroft…”  
  
All that gets him is a hiss.  
  
“Of course you did. Texting each other, are we? Keeping an eye on the freak?”  
  
Okay, gross miscalculation on John’s part. Well, he’s not as clever as _some_.  
  
His response is already coming out of his mouth to dismiss Sherlock’s stupid focus on the wrong thing.  
  
“What? No—What? Forget about Mycroft. What’s going on? You’re acting strange.”  
  
“I’m fine.” Sherlock responds the way a little boy would automatically say, _I didn’t do it_.  
  
“Yes, I can see,” John says, then presses gently. “Listen. Can we just— Can you talk to me, please? I don’t know what’s going on, but I—”  
  
He stops. His whole effort was directed at stopping the door from closing, keeping this…portal between the two of them open. Now that’s accomplished, John realizes this conversation is extremely awkward. What is he supposed to say? What exactly is he asking Sherlock to talk to him about? John only enquired where Sherlock went last night. Sherlock would never take the leap from _location, location_ to _spill your guts out_ lightly.  
  
But there is one thing John can ask, has the right to ask, will always ask.  
  
“Listen,” he begins once more, looking up at Sherlock to find his face a touch more unguarded. “Are you okay? After last night?” Instantly Sherlock tenses up again and John hurries to soothe him like one would coo at a small bird. “You don’t have to give me the details,” he says. Maybe not for Sherlock’s benefit only. Maybe John will be sick if he hears some particular details. He mumbles something along the lines of “You don’t look well.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Sherlock repeats. Of course he does. Of course he’ll stare at John, eyes piercing, despite their obvious dreary state. Of course he’ll tower over John, indeed quite the marble statue, one very god-like. _What do you think you are doing, you puny mortal, shoving your nose in my private affairs? Why would you think that I’d confide in you? Because we live together? Because you thought we had a relationship?_  
  
John feels unbelievably stupid.  
  
“Fine,” he says. “I can’t make you — I don’t want to force you to speak to me. Just…Forget it.”  
  
He’s about to turn to leave when Sherlock shoots, “Wait.”  
  
It’s a plain little word yet it makes John’s heart soar, and well, John is probably pathetic, but when it comes to Sherlock he’ll take pathetic over stupid any day.  
  
Sherlock has lowered his head and is watching John as if a third eye suddenly popped out on John’s face. John leaves him to it for a moment because the scared bird association is back, but when Sherlock doesn’t blink for about seven seconds John decides it’s time to give him some feedback.  
  
“You’re creeping me out a bit, just so you know,” he informs him. Sherlock creeping him out is something so reassuringly normal that John feels emboldened. “Can we, please, sit down and talk like normal people?” he asks.  
  
“What about?”  
  
John finds Sherlock’s obtuseness endearing and exasperating in equal measures. Something else familiar.  
  
“Sherlock, don’t play stupid with me! We’re flatmates. We’re friends. I’d like to know if there’s—” John takes a breath and his vision darkens. He’s just remembered what — whom — exactly they are trying to discuss.  
  
Well, best to call a spade a spade.  
  
“I bring my girlfriends here,” John says, “and although you’re not the most courteous person in the world, I still introduce them to you. If, um, if you’re getting back with your…ex—”  
  
“I’m not getting back with Jim.” Sherlock interrupts. He looks puzzled, but he’s Sherlock Holmes. Puzzled for long is foreign land for him. His eyes flash, then harden.  
  
“Oh, you should move in with my brother, John. I don’t know why you bother talking to me at all when you can just have a nice chit-chat with him.”  
  
John finds he has little time for this particular brand of childishness.  
  
“Can you just stop being such a prick? Mycroft hasn’t told me more than what I’ve figured out, and okay, maybe I shouldn’t have talked to him, but you’re not exactly inviting conversations, are you?”  
  
John rubs his forehead and decides on honesty. Well, partial honesty.  
  
“The only thing Mycroft told me that I didn’t know was that things weren’t great when it ended between you and Jim. So now that you started checking your phone and acting all secretive—”  
  
“I’m not being secretive,” Sherlock counters. Probably by habit, because really!  
  
“Come on, Sherlock.” John turns to evidence. “You’re coming and going at all hours. You’re glued to your phone. You haven’t said a word to me about—” Something erupts in John, the same bitter wistfulness that prompted him to start this. “You know what? Apart from that case last week, we’ve not talked at all!”  
  
“We talk. We talked yesterday about the toothbrushes.” Sherlock points out.  
  
“I don’t mean it literally, you idiot.” John has to shake his head. It’s like talking to an alien that’s only just landed. “Look,” he says. “I’ve lived with you. I can tell when something’s going on, and…I worry. About you.” That’s true. Let’s stick to that. Let’s not focus on how much John worries about himself, about where his stupid crush and his unrequited…fawning will leave him. Yes, it’s only Sherlock’s feelings John’s worried about.  
  
“If things didn’t work out—” John begins, then rephrases, goes to speak the devil’s name. “If Jim hurt you the last time—”  
  
Sherlock speaks over him so vehemently that John’s mouth claps shut on its own.  
  
“Jim didn’t hurt me. What, because it’s _me_ you just assume that—What? He broke my heart?” Sherlock’s entire face moves in offended sarcasm. “ _I_ left _him_. I ‘broke his heart’. And in case you think I’m so incompetent that I got it all wrong — I didn’t. These are his words. I was irresponsible and cruel — again, not my own naïve interpretation, but a perspective somewhat closer to yours, because Jim, like you, is tediously normal in that respect.”  
  
Halfway through Sherlock’s little speech John just wants to go. Whether to vomit or to murder Jim Moriarty isn’t clear but he does not want to be here and listen to one more word. It’s all coming in too quickly and John is dizzied with how unwell it’s making him feel.  
  
Sherlock’s next words don’t help. Neither does Sherlock paling, almost spiteful expression.  
  
“Do you know why I left him, John? Because I got bored with him.” Sherlock’s brought his face closer to John and breathes out the word _bored_. It’s such a tender sound and it cuts John, because he suddenly sees where this is going. “I didn’t even know I was bored.” Sherlock continues. “I just started avoiding him. He was the one to make me understand…”  
  
Sherlock straightens.  
  
“I don’t do feelings and I don’t do relationships,” he says with finality. “They are messy and they hurt people; _I_ hurt people. I can’t have any of that…clutter in my head. I need my head clear and I need my focus for my work.”  
  
The quiet after Sherlock finishes is almost deafening. John can’t process all this at once; it’s laughable that he should try. But some things are instantly taking shape. John knows he’s already hurt without ever so much as touching Sherlock’s lips. He also knows he’s just had his warning: He’ll be squashed like a bug that’s grown too large to be ignored. The notion fills him with dread, and more hurt — bigger than what any unrequited love could bring.  
  
But then something else comes forward, something to-the-point, hot and insidious.  
  
“Right,” John says. “So what are you doing seeing Jim again, then?”  
  
Sherlock draws himself to his full height. “It’s not — I’m not seeing him again.”  
  
“Yeah, it looked like it last night.”  
  
“I didn’t go there to see him. It was for something else,” Sherlock says.  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
“You wouldn’t understand.”  
  
John fights an impulse to laugh. It would be an ugly laugh. “’Course not,” he says briskly and then he just can’t help himself. “Did you sleep with him?”  
  
Sherlock looks close to panic. He swallows. “Why does it always have to be about sex?”  
  
“It isn’t always about sex.” John speaks, enunciating each word, because he’s had enough of being the fool. “But when someone tells you he doesn’t want a relationship and he is not getting back together with his ex, while he dresses up, goes out, and spends the night with that ex, sex becomes—”  
  
“How did you know I was at Jim’s?” Sherlock cuts, eyes narrowing.  
  
John isn’t going to spell it out for him.  
  
“I’m not stupid, Sherlock.”  
  
“No, you’re not,” Sherlock says absent-mindedly, still squinting at him. “Why do you want to know about the sex?”  
  
“I told you. I want to make sure you’re okay, because, you know — we’re friends.” Half-truths — difficult to speak but also harder to catch.  
  
Not for Sherlock. “No, that’s not how you ask,” he says slowly. “It’s not how you check on me.” He studies John with frightening determination. “What’s it to you?”  
  
John tries to stare back defiantly. The hopelessness of his entire situation fans out in front of him, obscuring all of Sherlock but his ever-knowing eyes. What was John thinking? The only chance he had of prolonging Sherlock’s obliviousness was if John didn’t speak to him at all, didn’t even let Sherlock see him up close. But what kind of a life was that going to be?  
  
What kind of a life is _this_ going to be? Dragging their relationship out until Sherlock gets bored of John? Or finds him out? Everything falling apart so easily — a house takes half a day to knock down, no matter that it took a year to build. Was there even a relationship? Because one person constantly pestering the other to at least be acknowledged as a friend…  
  
John feels his chest, neck, face burn. “Fine!” He erupts. “You know what — do whatever you like! I’m not going to— I’m fed up with it, Sherlock, time and time again to force myself—”  
  
As soon as he says it, he hears it. Pestering, indeed. _Even in your own fantasies with your unwanted attentions…_  
  
John tries to reverse to something they both know about.  
  
“I’m not going to assume we’re friends anymore, then. Right?” he says. “That thing you said, about the relationships…I get it. Only I don’t see how you can live with someone—” _How can I be around you and not see you, not want to be close? How can I live with you and not care about you? How can you—_  
  
Oh, right.  
  
“Well, I suppose _you_ can.” John ends abruptly — needs must. He’s already had his little cry for tonight, thanks.  
  
There is not just deafening silence after his words; the whole world has gone blank.  
  
Then Sherlock speaks. “John.”  
  
John looks at him. Still blank.  
  
“We _are_ friends,” Sherlock whispers.  
  
A beat — and then sound, colour, smell return to John to with a loud, merciful bang.  
  
“Then tell me!” He doesn’t care he’s pleading. “Sherlock, I’m not you, but I know you. Did anything…What’s going on?”  
  
“We had dinner.” Sherlock blurts out. “Then Jim showed me a drawing. Jim’s an architect. He used to do this thing for me…He would work on a project and he would hide the clues of a murder case in the drawing. Or he would text me a picture or the address of a building and a few words only, and I would solve his riddle. It’s a game we— It used to be a game we played.”  
  
John’s not breathing. He is afraid to stop Sherlock. Almost as much as he is afraid Sherlock won’t stop.  
  
“Last night he invited me over.” Sherlock continues. “I knew he had a new puzzle for me, we had spoken…We had dinner. I looked at the drawing. I started working on it, then— I—”  
  
_Go on, go on. Go on._  
  
Sherlock runs a hand through his hair. John wants to catch his trembling fingers, to hush them. “Then he—” Sherlock tries again. “When we were together, there were certain things…to do with sex.” _I don’t want to know, but you have to tell me._  
  
“Jim tried to—”  
  
The pause is interminable, like this entire conversation, like the little hell John’s found himself in. But worse than that, he feels something black and sticky fill up his guts that has nothing to do with him and his petty problems.  
  
Sherlock’s lips part, probably unconsciously.  
  
“I ran away,” he says suddenly, tone even. “That is, I left.” The innocence of Sherlock’s need to clarify threatens to smother John.  
  
“Why?” John asks.  
  
Sherlock frowns. “Because I didn’t want to be there.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Not important. It’s over now.”  
  
John feels his facial muscles spasm and his throat growl.  
  
“Over?” he says. “Over. What did he do?”  
  
“Anyway, that was all very—”  
  
“Sherlock. _What_ is over?”  
  
“I don’t see why we need to keep discussing—”  
  
“What happened?” _I’ll beat it out of him, if you don’t tell me._  
  
“I don’t know!” Sherlock yells, frustration and panic bursting forth at last. “I don’t know! How the hell should I know when everything is such a mess?! I don’t know how you people can live like that, with all those… _feelings_. But I can’t, I can’t— I just…I can’t.”  
  
Even before Sherlock’s shoulder bumps the doorframe John’s instincts have kicked in. He catches Sherlock’s chin and scans his face: blood pressure dropping rapidly.  
  
“Get inside.” John says. “Come on.”  
  
He manoeuvres Sherlock into the room and towards the bed, not letting go of him. It feels so good to hold him, to have a reason for it, as guilty as this one is. Sherlock’s fingers hover over John’s lower arm, then wrap around it as Sherlock arranges himself along the bed.  
  
John swipes a quick hand across Sherlock’s forehead and checks his pulse on his wrist. Hyperventilation, to start with. He stares at Sherlock for a moment and hears the blood in his own ears, its roar protective, primal.  
  
Sherlock looks back, wide-eyed and angelic.  
  
Not doing feelings. Oh, Sherlock.  
  
_Everything_ becomes basic and crystal clear.  
  
“Right,” John says. “You are staying here and having some tea. You’re getting into your PJs and then you _will_ sleep even if you have to take three pills. I hate it that you’re an ex-addict, you know that?” John mentions it matter-of-factly, because the consistency of this conversation has long gone out the window. “I hate it that I always have to worry what you’re taking.”  
  
The back of his hand is resting against Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock is holding John’s gaze and with each second it’s getting closer and closer—  
  
“I want sugar in my tea,” Sherlock rumbles.  
  
_I want to give you anything you ask for, anything. I love you so fucking much._  
  
“You’re not getting any,” John says. The colour has begun returning to Sherlock’s face so his blood pressure is no longer that low. Sugar means energy and Sherlock needs to sleep.  
  
John lowers his eyes and notices that Sherlock’s little finger is brushing against the denim of his jeans.  
  
Sherlock needs to sleep.  
  
John gets up from the bed. “Change,” he says and goes to the kitchen to make the tea.

 

 

_Chapter Fifteen_

  
Sherlock sleeps.  
  
When he really, really needs the rest, he actually loves sleeping. It’s the ultimate switch-off—he has often reflected that this is what being dead must be like, only without the dreaming and the waking up. One more reason to have no sentiment for the corpses he comes across in his work. When Sherlock sleeps, dreamless, there is absolutely nothing. For the dead, that’s permanent. It would be all the same to them whether Sherlock cared or not.  
  
He does wake up a couple of times during this particular night. There’s immediate uneasiness, an objection to be sucked out of this blissful nothingness and into the material world. In which Sherlock, in his drowsy state, feels rather than knows there’s something bad. The feeling is magnified by the dark, confusion and fear mingling into a big, formless threat.  
  
Then he remembers that John is there.  
  
The feeling of John is a cloak of instant order and peace: It covers Sherlock’s world in a different kind of darkness, hushed and safe, lulling him back to sleep. There are no thoughts about it; _John_ continues to be a feeling in and of itself.  
  
When Sherlock wakes up the third time the same thing occurs, but he doesn’t go back to sleep. Morning light defies the thickness of the curtains. It gives the world vague outlines; it weakens the lurch of the unnamed anxiety and gives it shape, too. Funny how little light is needed to give things shape. Sherlock can already distinguish the conversation with John last night, then running away from Jim’s the night before. Details sharpen into view. Some of them he can’t explain, though. For instance, why did he feel so lightheaded when he and John talked about— What? Something about relationships? John asked about sex—  
  
Sherlock opens his eyes, kicks the covers away from his legs, and props himself up on his elbows. Outside: bright. Place: bedroom, Baker Street. John is there. No. John is _here_.  
  
Sherlock’s head falls back onto the pillow. He stares at the ceiling. Something about sex bothers him, evidently. Well, that’s only mildly surprising—he’s never been keen on sex. But this time he ran away from Jim when Jim started kissing him and his hand moved to Sherlock’s genitalia…  
  
Sherlock gets up, marches to the window, and throws the curtains open. Light bursts into the room and makes the furniture almost shimmer. Sherlock returns to his bed, props his pillows up, then wriggles under the covers and rests his back against the pillows. He places the tips of his fingers together and presses them to his mouth.  
  
Twice in the last forty-eight hours something about sex has made him act irrational. Last night Sherlock deteriorated when he started telling John about the experience of the previous night. He was actually lost for words. How peculiar.  
  
John pushed. He was angry. Sherlock can see now that John wasn’t angry with him but on his behalf. John thought something wrong had happened, then. _Did_ something wrong happen? Because John isn’t too bright about some things but about others Sherlock has learnt to take his word as gospel. John just seems to figure out stuff about people, including those confusing, invisible dynamics between them. For instance, Sherlock would know _that_ Sally Donovan slept with Anderson, but John would know why. And while Sherlock doesn’t care one whit about that answer, in other cases this kind of knowledge is useful. Pity John can never break it down to individual steps, can’t outline what he observes or how he arrives from the first clue to the conclusion. It explains why his blog entries on their cases are so dismal as far as the science is concerned.  
  
So, something about sex. And about feelings. But Sherlock has always found sex and feelings a mess. At least sex, he understands. Sex is about doing things—what’s not to understand? Feelings are about…well, feeling things. You can’t touch them; you can’t give them names. With sex there are penises, penetration, lubricants. Feelings can rarely be labelled. Feelings overlap, arrive without any warning. They have no definition that Sherlock has found satisfactory yet. They make you unwell and unreasonable, and—worst of all—there is no logical structure to them, no system that can be applied to bring order. Sherlock considers himself lucky, because he is genuinely void of sentiment most of the time, at least in the traditional sense of the word. He cares about things, of course, but those feelings are clear: disappointment when the results of an experiment dispute Sherlock’s hypothesis; frustration when there isn’t enough data to pinpoint the exact murder weapon; delight when there is an unusual, imaginative puzzle.  
  
An unusual, imaginative puzzle. Wasn’t that the promise that brought Sherlock to Jim’s? Yet there wasn’t delight. Why? Isolate the variables. _Think_.  
  
It’s the human component. It’s Jim.  
  
John also thinks it’s Jim, and John can be more tenacious than Lestrade when he’s got his nose onto something. Therefore, in these matters where no material evidence can be presented, John’s opinion counts as further proof that it _is_ Jim.  
  
Sherlock pulls up his knees to his chest and hugs them, then rests his chin on top. His mind returns to waking up during the night, to how the thought of John meant peace and _Go back to sleep_. John is still here despite Sherlock saying that one day he might get rid of him, too. Because that was what Sherlock really said to John, even he can see that. But he can’t explain for the life of him why he said it. It is completely untrue, for one thing! At the time Sherlock thought of how Jim had called him on his cruelty; he thinks about it again now. Jim is right—Sherlock must be cruel. Why would he say that to John otherwise? _How_ could he say that to John?  
  
Sherlock feels an odd pinching at the bridge of his nose and it takes him a second to realize what it is.  
  
***  
  
It’s almost eleven when he finally emerges from his room. He dives straight into the bathroom for a quick shower, but his ear manages to pick up sounds from the sitting room—John is up. There’s the smell of toast, too.  
  
After ten minutes Sherlock slides back into his bedroom, not ready to give signs of life just yet. He towels his hair dry, bowing his head, and his eyes fall to the red spots on his chest where he’s rubbed the skin harder. The sight makes Sherlock’s pulse speed—it somehow connects to the memory of last night. John, sitting on Sherlock’s bed. Sherlock, holding onto John’s lower arm. It was good. It made Sherlock feel steady, but that’s John all over.  
  
John, looking at him with such concentration and concern. Sherlock’s little finger brushing John’s thigh.  
  
Sherlock tucks in his chin and looks at his chest again, his brow furrowing. The redness has spread. He blinks a few times, mind blank, then decides it’s not a bad sensation, so he goes to get some clean clothes.  
  
When he appears in the kitchen a few minutes later, John calls from the sitting room, “Morning.”  
  
“Hmm,” Sherlock responds and puts the kettle on.  
  
“There’s toast in here,” John calls again.  
  
Sherlock shows up in the sitting room, feeling for a split second as if he’s stepping on a stage.  
  
John is reading the paper, sprawled on the sofa. He looks up at Sherlock; Sherlock tilts his head and lifts an eyebrow. John gives him a bright, innocent smile, before averting his eyes quickly. Sherlock bites his lips and doesn’t know where to look. Certainly not at his own chest.  
  
What’s going on?  
  
“Why are you on the sofa?” he asks, because this seems like a good place to start.  
  
“Because you weren’t on it,” John replies reasonably and folds himself up into a sitting position, placing the paper in his lap. He’s already fully dressed in a shirt, a cardigan, and a pair of cotton trousers.  
  
“Are you going out?” Sherlock enquires.  
  
“No.”  
  
John seems to be awaiting more questions, but Sherlock can’t think of any. He can’t think of much at all to be honest. It’s not a bad feeling, either. So far the morning has a distinctive advantage over last night. Then suddenly Sherlock has a new question.  
  
“Do you want tea?”  
  
“No, I’m good, thanks.” John points at the cup on the table in front of him.  
  
Sherlock nods and heads back to the kitchen.  
  
He returns with a whole tea set. He puts the tray on the big table, the clatter of china making him strangely cheerful. With his peripheral vision Sherlock notes John lifting his eyes from the paper and watching him. Sherlock pours himself a cup, adds the milk, and then slowly and deliberately puts two heaped tea-spoons of sugar in. He turns his eyes to John as soon as the spoon plunges into the liquid to stir it, and he gives him a curl of a grin.  
  
John’s face lights up and he suddenly smiles, with teeth and everything. Sherlock’s spoon hits the inner walls of the cup a few times in quick succession. Mycroft would be appalled.  
  
“You can make me that nice cappuccino later,” John remarks. “Or show me how to make it myself. Unless it’s something really dangerous or complicated.”  
  
“It’s neither,” Sherlock says as he settles at the table and reaches for the toast, then wrinkles his nose when he finds it cold. He decides not to press the point and starts buttering a slice, while talking. “It’s a simple enough process of melting Mexican vanilla sugar to a hundred and ten degrees of Celsius, although you can of course vary the temperature by controlling the level of acidity—I must say that near-neutral acidity, although slowing the rate of caramelisation and consuming an inordinate amount of time for such a trivial pursuit, did produce the cappuccino you enjoyed so much. Then you mix the caramelised sugar with whole goat milk, the one from the farmers market, more precisely from the stall where you always insist on talking to the farmer with the unfortunate eyebrows who used to be a clown. The milk has to be heated to precisely ninety-three degrees. Then all you have to do is add half a shot of espresso, that particular Italian brand you like—I don’t remember the name; I’ve given the box to the people downstairs so they make it. Their espresso machine isn’t great, but it’s okay. If you want to we can look into buying one for here.”  
  
Sherlock realizes that John hasn’t said a word so he turns his head to look at him. John is sitting with legs slightly ajar, arms resting by his side, and is boggling quietly. He shuts his mouth but the sentiment remains in his eyes. Their dove gray shines and frolics in the bright waves of sunlight, rolls into blueness in a way that says _Sunday_ and _home_ to Sherlock like nothing else does.  
  
The pinching at the bridge of Sherlock’s nose reappears furiously and Sherlock feels his eyes widen in shock. Is there something in the air this morning?  
  
He looks down at his toast quickly and takes a big gulp of tea, nearly scalding himself, then clears his throat.  
  
“Like I said—simple enough.”  
  
“Well,” John says. “Maybe to you. I just don’t have the patience to do all that so carefully—”  
  
“You have the patience,” Sherlock interrupts. “But you have it for others. You don’t have it for yourself.”  
  
He doesn’t have to look at John; he can see the contours of his little face right there on his slice of toast. The bite Sherlock’s taken is where John’s throat would be. Sherlock swallows.  
  
“I’ll make it this afternoon,” he says. “And I meant it about the espresso machine. It’ll give Mycroft a heart attack to see our household furnished with something so luxurious and ‘grown-up’. I think we should go for the most exorbitant—”  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock does look at John. John’s face has become pinched.  
  
“Listen,” he begins, and Sherlock prays he doesn’t tell him that he’ll be leaving Baker Street so no espresso machines, thanks.  
  
“I did something…I did something wrong,” John says.  
  
Oh.  
  
John looks extremely guilty, but his is not a patch for the guilt Sherlock feels when he catches himself storing that bit of data to use against John in case he decides to leave. At the moment, though, Sherlock might have to use it to blackmail John to speak at all.  
  
Sherlock lifts eyebrows in a silent, _So?_  
  
John opens his mouth with determination, but the words take a while to come out—until they’re rushing out, in one breath.  
  
“Your phone rang late last night,” John says, face already reddening. “It was here, you’d left it here. I wanted to stop the sound, it was very loud, and then I looked, and I saw it was Jim. And I’m sorry, I don’t know— I picked up.” John inhales deeply and closes his mouth.  
  
Apart from some curiosity Sherlock feels nothing but numbness.  
  
“And?” He prompts.  
  
“And I was still pretty angry,” John continues just as abruptly as he paused, “and you didn’t say what happened, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out that—I mean, I don’t know if he forced himself on you or—”  
  
“He didn’t force himself on me,” Sherlock says indignantly. He’s not a child!  
  
John lifts his hands in the air. “Fine, fine, I’m sorry! Okay? You just looked so unhappy and…all over the place, and I thought he’d done something against your will, something to make you run away—”  
  
“Well, I was there, fully conscious, wasn’t I? How can it be against my will? I wasn’t even high like—” Sherlock stops with his mouth open. John has stretched his neck forward and turned his head to one side.  
  
“What?”  
  
Sherlock doesn’t say anything.  
  
“Like when?” John insists.  
  
“Oh, what does it matter?” Sherlock literally throws his arms in the air. “It was a long time ago and I was an adult back then, too—”  
  
“Just because someone is an adult it doesn’t mean that they’re not being taken advantage of!”  
  
“How is it taking advantage if I’m not saying _No_ and I’m letting it happen?”  
  
“Oh yes, because drug addicts are notoriously in charge of themselves! Can you just stop and listen to what you’re saying?”  
  
“What I’m saying,” Sherlock yells, “is that it didn’t bother me, because I didn’t even know what was going on half the time!”  
  
John is gaping at him like a very unhappy, very deadly fish.  
  
“You can’t be serious!” he says at last.  
  
Sherlock lifts his chin defiantly. He feels raw and queasy. He takes his cup in hand and drinks thirstily.  
  
John stands up and for a second it looks like he’s going to leave the room. He walks to the window instead and looks out, jaw clenching furiously. Sherlock feels incredibly at fault, worse than he’s ever felt around John, worse even than the time John found out about his pants and eBay.  
  
John shakes his head a couple of times before finally turning to Sherlock.  
  
“I'm not going to argue the definition of consent with you. What I want—I don’t want James Moriarty in my home, you got that? I don’t want him setting a foot here ever again. I don’t care that you were here first—this is my home, too.” John begins shaking his head again, this time in a very pronounced manner. “To tell you the truth, even if it means that I have to move out, I _will_ move out. I’m not going to—”  
  
“John,” Sherlock says, because the mess has become bigger than ever, but miraculously he knows his whereabouts in it. “John,” he repeats. John looks at him, panting and looking so, so miserable.  
  
“You don’t have to move out. Jim won’t be coming here anymore. I won’t see him. Anymore.”  
  
John considers him and asks, voice rough, “Why?”  
  
Sherlock frowns lightly at the obvious answer. “Because I don’t want to.”  
  
The something in the air has spread—John’s suffering from it, too. Sherlock is fleetingly grateful that Mycroft hasn’t chosen this morning for one of his impromptu visits of thinly-veiled spying—Sherlock would never live down his brother seeing both him and John flushed and close to tears.  
  
“I said that to him on the phone,” John says out of the blue. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t—I know it was none of my business, but I just didn’t—I said to him that you were asleep, and told him that I didn’t know what was going on, but I wanted him to stay away, because I could see you weren’t…well. And I forbade him to come here.”  
  
Sherlock studies him for a moment, marvelling at the expedience of John’s emotions. They don’t topple him over. They don’t make him tremble, or brood, or wander the streets of London at night. They don’t make his blood pressure drop. John is angry at Jim; Jim calls; John shows Jim he’s angry, and there are actions, too, real and measurable: He tells Jim he’s banned from here. He tells Jim to leave Sherlock alone.  
  
And the most extraordinary thing is that this is _exactly_ what Sherlock wants. He just had no idea until a minute ago.  
  
John sighs from the window. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. It was out of order to—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Sherlock says.  
  
They look at each other in silence, then look away at the same time.  
  
“Shall we brew a new pot of tea?” Sherlock asks. “This one’s lukewarm now.”

 

 

_Chapter Sixteen_

  
John drops into his armchair and stares ahead, unblinking. His head aches—it feels as if a small pebble has replaced his pituitary gland.  
  
He knows he’ll need time to comprehend the full implications of what was said tonight. Part of him resents the entire evening, wishes it never happened, but that’s the raw part. No one likes this sort of talk; it makes you feel so exposed, and you’re not even sure why.  
  
John sips his tea, squinting at the dark windows—curtains are still open. If that’s how _he_ is, what must it be like for Sherlock? He must be feeling really vulnerable, with the added “bonus” of not even recognizing it. God, Harry seems almost functional compared to him. At least she’s doing something millions of others do. Drinking is a universal coping mechanism; destructive, yes, but widely applied.  
  
And what does Sherlock do? Nothing. He flails about, confused and hurt, and hiding it well not just from everyone else, but from himself. John can’t bear, he cannot _bear_ to think of him that way, but he has to. He knows what he saw tonight.  
  
In retrospect, Sherlock hasn’t looked happy in his unique, Sherlockian way for ages. John would literally punch himself in the face if it didn’t seem so ridiculous. Plus, he doesn’t want to alarm Sherlock, who, of course, would deduce it was John who did it. Right now John needs to remain a fixed point of security for Sherlock, not greet him with a self-inflicted injury.  
  
But that doesn’t mean he can’t be angry with himself. How could he have been so petty and self-absorbed? _They_ haven’t been happy for ages and all John did was go to work, then go to stupid pubs for stupid chats, while at home he kept his mouth so tightly shut, one would think he had gold coins in it! God, he’s an idiot. Mycroft told him to speak to Sherlock—  
  
John straightens in his chair.  
  
Does Mycroft know anything John doesn’t? Well, of course he does—he’s Mycroft. But did he _expect_ something bad would happen to Sherlock? Did he ask John to keep an eye on Sherlock?  
  
No. Mycroft would never risk Sherlock’s well-being. He wouldn’t go that far.  
  
Wouldn’t he?  
  
But why? To teach Sherlock a lesson? To exploit Sherlock’s vulnerability? Or John’s? To what end?  
  
John can feel the pebble grow. Figuring out the motives and schemes of Mycroft Holmes should be the ultimate entry test for the Geniuses Exclusive World Club and John would hardly make it to the list of candidates for the porter’s job.  
  
Whatever was going on at Mycroft’s end, he did ask John to talk to Sherlock. He warned him to tread carefully; he texted him, almost pleading, for God’s sake. John’s the one who failed Sherlock, regardless of his reasons. Cowardice? Immaturity? Stupidity? It’s a small miracle Sherlock counts John as his friend. Anyone with John’s shining performance would have been kicked out of Sherlock’s life before the day was over.  
  
John closes his eyes and keeps them shut for a few seconds, then opens them again and sighs. He gets up and draws the curtains, then quietly goes to Sherlock’s bedroom door. He’s left it ajar and now peers in.  
  
Sherlock has finished his tea and slid down under the covers. His dark hair contrasts against the white of the pillows. There’s enough streetlight to show the lack of self-consciousness in his pose: He’s on his back, asleep, head turned slightly towards the door. His left hand—a delicate, creamy contour—is resting on top of the covers over his solar plexus. John watches him for a few seconds, then goes in on tiptoe to draw Sherlock’s curtains on both windows. On his way out he leaves the door ajar again. It’s an irrational impulse, but he wants Sherlock to feel the connection to someone else even in his sleep.  
  
John flops back into his chair and rubs his face. There’s no point in crying over spilt milk. He was an idiot, but at least they talked tonight and he knows what he’s going to do. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s wholesome and it makes John feel like he’s atoning for his inadequacy. It gives him a sense of purpose that’s always been there, ever since he met Sherlock. But John resisted it, thought that it wasn’t enough or that it robbed him of his life. Now he sees it _was_ his life.  
  
He is going to do absolutely nothing different. He will stay at Baker Street for as long as Sherlock needs him and this might be another kind of idiocy, but John believes Sherlock does need him. John doesn’t _want_ Sherlock to need him. He would rather Sherlock became an insufferably self-sufficient individual who didn’t even remember who John was than remain the fragile creature sleeping next door. But Sherlock is who he is. And so is John: a protector, a corrective, a foil; a doctor, if he must. A friend.  
  
That’s all. John will have to deal with the inconvenient part of his feelings by letting it wither and die, unwatered and unfed.  
  
He bows his head and his eyes fall on his belly and his lap. Something unbelievably sad leaks into him like petrol into the ocean, but then he thinks of Sherlock’s hand over the covers and he blinks, blinks again. He feels the pebble starting to dissolve as if it’s been put into one of Sherlock’s experimental chemical concoctions. _How to dissolve John Watson’s pain._ There’s an experiment.  
  
***  
  
Two hours later the phone rings.  
  
The most bizarre thing is that at the exact same moment, blurred images are zinging around in John’s head, all to do with Moriarty: John holding the bastard by the lapels, punching him, pointing a finger in his face. So when John takes hold of Sherlock’s loud phone and sees the name on the screen, his mind needs a second to distinguish between fantasy and reality.  
  
Apparently, it also needs that second to override John’s sense of boundaries. Answering another person’s phone call by an intimate acquaintance is hardly appropriate, but John does just that. His brain provides him with a direct link to the fantasy; real, vocal words emerge from John’s mouth, while in his head his spectral counterpart continues to move his lips, saying the same words silently.  
  
“Sherlock is asleep,” John starts without preamble. “Don’t call him for another twelve hours, or you know what? Just don't call him at all. I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but it’s not doing him any good so you should just back off.”  
  
There’s a short pause and then that memorable voice says with the barest hint of amusement, “Who is this?”  
  
John’s hand convulses into a fist.  
  
“John Watson. We met when you came to Baker Street.”  
  
“Oh, Doctor Watson—of course. Sorry.” Now with a lilt of mockery. “I assume something must have happened to get your knickers in a twist.”  
  
John’s nostrils flare, as his lips start forming _Oh, you fucking…_  
  
“You tell me,” he says instead.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
John curtly nods. “Right,” he says with as much sarcasm as he can muster. “Maybe you’ll get this, then—stop texting and calling Sherlock, and stop fucking around with—”  
  
An exaggerated tut cuts through John’s words.  
  
“But that’s the problem, Doctor Watson. I _have_ to text him and call him, in order to fuck him…around.”  
  
John freezes. How can his blood be boiling, then? He swallows and the movement of his Adam’s apple tells him that he’s stopped breathing. His jaw is hurting; his ears are filled with high-pitched noise. Classic.  
  
No. No. He isn’t falling for that.  
  
He opens his mouth and quietly fills his lungs with air.  
  
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, you listen to me. It’s none of my business what you and Sherlock get up to, but you’re not allowed to set foot here again, right? You are not allowed, in here, in our flat—in _my_ flat, and if you ever hurt Sherlock, if you ever as much as—”  
  
John’s been shaking his head, his words pouring out of his mouth and tumbling down with that same protective roar from earlier on—a waterfall of feeling falling into an abyss.  
  
A cold voice breaks through the cascade. “What are you going to do…John?”  
  
John lifts his chin and stands to attention. “I’ll find you,” he says.  
  
There’s silence at the other end of the line. John blinks rapidly, his whole body undergoing a military transformation.  
  
“Not if I find you first,” comes the equally quiet reply.  
  
Then suddenly Jim Moriarty speaks with cheeriness that shakes John’s composure more than anything in the conversation so far.  
  
“Well! This is all very touching. I wish I could say I’ll be seeing you around, but you’ve made it clear the three of us won’t be having tea and biscuits any time soon. Ooh.” The last is said with childish disappointment, then the voice goes abruptly cold again. “Send my love to Sherlock.”  
  
John hangs up.  
  
***  
  
It’s not much of a rest, but John doesn’t feel tired in the morning. There’s a deeper sense of quietude in him, ungoverned by the physical. John wonders whether that’s what it’s like for Sherlock all the time and a new understanding of Sherlock’s drug history comes to reluctant existence.  
  
Only with John, it’s not drugs or puzzles. A bit of a bore, but it’s what it’s always been: Action. He didn’t realize how much he had missed things happening _with_ him, not just around him; missed being an involved party in Sherlock’s life, no matter in what twisted way.  
  
John checks on Sherlock first thing and finds him sleeping on his stomach, hand splayed on the pillow next to his face. The forefinger is straight and very close to Sherlock’s lips—it’s like Sherlock’s shushing John, swearing him to secrecy in his sleep. John softly closes the door and goes about his morning, making as little noise as possible.  
  
Sherlock stirs around eleven, but doesn’t come to the sitting room until half past. His hair is damp and his ankles are bare, and John doesn’t know where to look. They have a little exchange about John taking Sherlock’s place on the sofa, then another, this one wordless, when Sherlock demonstratively puts two spoons of sugar in his tea. Cheeky bastard. John allows himself a moment to behold the rare wonder of a Sunday morning, playful Sherlock.  
  
Who doesn’t lose any time getting back to his crazy self. He machine-guns John with an explanation of the “simple enough” way to prepare that amazing cappuccino John had a week ago, but somewhere in the tiny blank spaces between all the words John reads a message that gives gravity an extra pull over his bottom jaw. Nothing is simple about the process Sherlock describes. Every ingredient he mentions is special, because it’s the best possible, as selected by either of them.  
  
It’s Sherlock effectively telling John that John deserves the best.  
  
_Can I have you?_  
  
“Like I said—simple enough,” Sherlock says.  
  
“Well, maybe to you,” John replies, rueful. “I just don’t have the patience to do all that so carefully—”  
  
“You have the patience,” Sherlock interrupts. “But you have it for others. You don’t have it for yourself.”  
  
John will later reflect on the time Sherlock must have dedicated to observing him, on the depth of understanding that Sherlock shows about another person, about John. At the moment all John does is melt into the thick undercurrent of joy running through his entire body and warming him clear to his bones.  
  
“I’ll make it this afternoon,” Sherlock goes on, bringing John back to focus. “And I meant it about the espresso machine. It’ll give Mycroft a heart attack to see our household furnished with something so luxurious and ‘grown-up’. I think we should go for the most exorbitant—”  
  
The warmth is wrong. John doesn’t deserve the warmth. Nor does Sherlock deserve to keep thinking it’s all good between them. John can’t let him draw another detail of this blissful future, filled with espresso machines and cappuccinos...  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock stops talking instantly.  
  
“Listen.” John can barely look him in the eye. “I did something…I did something wrong.”  
  
Sherlock only lifts eyebrows in a silent prompt, _Go on._  
  
God, John doesn’t want to. Too many _ifs_ , too awkward, too dangerous…  
  
“Your phone rang late last night,” he says, feeling his heart speed up. “It was here, you’d left it here. I wanted to stop the sound, it was very loud, and then I looked, and I saw it was Jim. And I’m sorry, I don’t know—I picked up.”  
  
Sherlock continues to look curious. “And?”  
  
“And I was still pretty angry, and you didn’t say what happened, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out that— I mean, I don’t know if he forced himself on you or—”  
  
“He didn’t force himself on me,” Sherlock says defensively.  
  
“Fine, fine, I’m sorry! Okay?” John hurries to say. “You just looked so unhappy and…all over the place, and I thought he’d done something against your will, something to make you run away—”  
  
“Well, I was there, fully conscious, wasn’t I? How can it be against my will? I wasn’t even high like—” Sherlock’s mouth hangs open.  
  
What? _What?_  
  
“What?”  
  
Sherlock doesn’t speak.  
  
“Like when?” John pushes.  
  
“Oh, what does it matter?” Sherlock throws his arms in the air and John pictures him holding the tea tray, pictures the china flying in the air, then dropping around them in a cloudburst of porcelain missiles.  
  
“It was a long time ago!” Sherlock’s raising his voice. “And I was an adult back then, too—”  
  
“Just because someone is an adult it doesn’t mean they can’t be taken advantage of!”  
  
“How is it taking advantage if I’m not saying _No_ and I’m letting it happen?”  
  
For a second the ridiculousness of Sherlock’s argument overtakes all else.  
  
“Oh yes,” John says, injecting the words with heavy irony, “because drug addicts are notoriously in charge of themselves! Can you just stop and listen to what you’re saying?”  
  
“What I’m saying,” Sherlock yells, “is that it didn’t bother me, because I didn’t even know what was going on half the time!”  
  
_Please, let this be something you got wrong. Let it mean something else._  
  
“You can’t be serious!” John breathes.  
  
Sherlock drinks some tea in big gulps. There’s a subtle tremor in his hand. Why are they back to this, why?  
  
John gets up and walks to the window in a daze. He wants to know more before jumping to conclusions, although he fears he’s already mid-air. It’s the landing that’s going to be tricky—the conclusions are inevitable. What’s disconcerting is that John isn’t really that surprised. All the unsaid, all of Sherlock’s unconscious subterfuge. John’s intuition has been shouting that there’s something wrong, but John thought he was just jealous.  
  
And what now? This argument has got out of hand and John doesn’t even want to go back to it. He can’t tell Sherlock what to do, either. What a mess, a complete mess.  
  
Well, best tackle it, then.  
  
“I’m not going to argue the definition of consent with you.” He turns to Sherlock. “What I want— I don’t want James Moriarty in my home, you got that? I don’t want him setting a foot here ever again. I don’t care that you were here first—this is my home, too.” John’s fantasy offers him the image of that slimy wanker right there, next to Sherlock. “To tell you the truth, even if it means that I have to move out, I _will_ move out. I’m not going to—”  
  
“John.”  
  
So good to hear.  
  
“John,” Sherlock repeats. John looks at him. Sherlock’s eyes are clear, discerning. Clever. Sherlock will figure this out. Sherlock is the cleverest.  
  
_Don’t make me leave._  
  
“You don’t have to move out,” Sherlock says. “Jim won’t be coming here anymore. I won’t see him. Anymore.”  
  
John _must_ know this is something of Sherlock’s. “Why?”  
  
“Because I don’t want to,” Sherlock says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  
  
John is so glad that evidently it is the most obvious thing to _Sherlock_ that he feels his throat tighten.  
  
“I said that to him on the phone,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t— I know it was none of my business, but I just didn’t— I said to him that you were asleep, and told him that I didn’t know what was going on, but I wanted him to stay away, because I could see you weren’t…well. And I forbade him to come here.”  
  
The unwavering gaze and the silence of Sherlock’s study somehow dissolve the overcast atmosphere and John feels himself calm. He sighs.  
  
“I’m sorry, Sherlock. It was out of order to—”  
  
“It’s fine,” Sherlock says.  
  
John searches his face. Unaffected and certain, Sherlock holds his eyes. It _is_ fine. It’s bloody fine.  
  
The intensity of the prolonged eye-contact—the second in such a short time—makes John’s palms dampen. They look away at the same time.  
  
“Shall we brew a new pot of tea?” Sherlock asks. “This one’s lukewarm now.”  
  
John nods, then realizes Sherlock is waiting for him to do it. He suddenly grins and points at the tea tray.  
  
“I’ll take this, shall I?”  
  
***  
  
In the kitchen, John waits, listening to the gradual riot of the bubbles in the kettle. In the space of the last twelve hours he has had time to think—and to realize that Jim Moriarty taunting him about fucking Sherlock could mean only one thing: he knows. Which in turn means it’s now only a matter of time before John’s own bubble bursts.

 

 

_Chapter Seventeen_

  
Jim takes three days to call. That is, he calls on Wednesday—interesting how Sherlock has begun dividing time to Before the Conversation and After the Conversation. He isn’t even sure which conversation. The whole weekend with its unclear waters is filed under the vague ‘The Time John and I Talked’.  
  
But it’s a good weekend, all things considered. There is less awkwardness than expected. Sherlock tries not to dwell too much on Jim or the past, both for the uneasiness the subjects provoke and for the fear that somewhere in there, small and out of sight, Sherlock hides an Achilles heel that would trick him into turning on it and running straight back to Jim.  
  
He does dwell on John, rather a lot and without any reservations—in those same unclear waters John is the shiny fish that zigzags into view before disappearing all too quickly.  
  
Not that John disappears per se. He stays put the entire Sunday, doing crosswords, tidying up, going around in his gown, post-shower, his hair much darker—  
  
That’s exactly the kind of fishy thing Sherlock means. What does it matter that John’s hair is darker when wet?  
  
John averts his eyes every time he catches Sherlock watching him. John’s breathing quickens—probably one of those privacy things—until finally he slams his palm over the folded paper on his thigh, asking, “What?”  
  
Sherlock dons his best clueless expression and says, “Nothing.”  
  
On Sunday night Sherlock goes to bed and as he lies on his back waiting for the sheets to warm up, he visualizes the ebb and flow of data about John, then gradually empties his mind until there’s only the _John_ -feeling—and he falls asleep.  
  
Monday progresses and Sherlock is grateful to find that history won’t repeat itself, not today. Jim’s distractions aren’t alluring anymore; nothing of Jim’s is. Sherlock would be happy to never hear from Jim again and he doesn’t care at all to find out why—for Sherlock, the mere clarity of his wishes is more than enough. Besides, he sort of _senses_ that he knows why he doesn’t want to see Jim, but he doesn’t really _understand_ what he knows, so he wisely steers clear of…all that.  
  
But the idea of Jim returning once more in an unknown years’ time bothers Sherlock, because he can’t trust himself, not for sure. In the time after the Conversation Sherlock has figured out that Jim’s got the power to make Sherlock do what Jim wants.  
  
On Tuesday morning Sherlock is cracking the shell of his boiled egg when he has an epiphany: He knows what this sort of power is called.  
  
Well, next time Jim calls, Sherlock will be prepared. Jim wants to manipulate someone who for years was the subject of Mycroft’s manipulations? Good luck, Jim.  
  
***  
  
But when Jim does call, Sherlock isn’t prepared at all. He is at home, in the middle of wrapping up the finer points of an interesting case that John will probably call something predictable like “The Mysterious Tenant”. Mrs. Hudson seems to know every other landlady in the Marylebone area—it is she, who arrives with a hyper, chattering Mrs. Pearce on Tuesday after breakfast, making Sherlock grab Mrs. Hudson by the shoulders and kiss both her cheeks, then bring John home with an exultant text. Mrs. Pearce’s little puzzle about her ‘invisible’ tenant turns out to be another one of those cases that are not what they seem. This time it spans three continents and involves secret societies, attempted murder, and the type of melodrama _The Sun_ will be all over.  
  
When his mobile rings, Sherlock is speaking to John and Lestrade from in front of the fireplace. They’re both sitting in the armchairs, Lestrade looking far more agog than John. Irritated at the interruption, Sherlock picks up his phone from the mantelpiece and looks at it, while he keeps talking.  
  
Jim’s number cuts him mid-word, and for a few seconds Sherlock freezes. Then he hangs up, like he’s planned to do all along, and he looks down at Lestrade and John. He wants to go on, very much, but his mind has derailed.  
  
And John can see it. He licks his lips quickly and nods to the phone in Sherlock’s hands.  
  
“Who was that?”  
  
_Nobody_ , is on the tip of Sherlock’s tongue—habit is hard to change—but then he remembers the other part of the plan, the one concerning John: No more lying to John about Jim. Sherlock isn’t as bold, or stupid, as to think that he can single-handedly counteract an intelligent master of manipulation like Jim. But he can rally in support and so far, in the short span of his involvement, John Watson has once more proven that he has the uncanny ability to make a difference in Sherlock’s life without turning a metaphorical hair out of place. Besides, a sequence of events evolves in Sherlock’s mind like a hologram projection: He sees himself open his mouth and lie to John; John sees him lie; John nods and withdraws. He sees himself panic and withdraw as well; they sit together and eat and watch telly in that seemingly normal way they did for weeks, and Sherlock cannot go through that again, no.  
  
“Jim,” he says. “It was Jim.”  
  
John licks his lips once more. “Aren’t you going to…talk to him?”  
  
“No. I don’t intend to talk to him at all.”  
  
In that instant Sherlock’s phone chimes with a message.  
  
_I take it you don’t want to talk. Is it at the moment or at all?_  
  
Sherlock deletes the message, puts his phone on silent, pushes it into his pocket, then looks at his audience. Lestrade has his typical expression for such occasions—he’s a third dazed, a third curious, and the last third is what’s made Sherlock take the good inspector’s calls in the last six years: intelligence, of the blunt, pragmatic kind.  
  
John’s expression, ironically, has turned a lot like the way it should have been when Sherlock was firing out his impressive deductions.  
  
“I am sure that if you look through the Inland Revenue records,” Sherlock turns to Lestrade, his voice banning the last minute from existence, “you’ll find evidence of at least three different businesses registered for Murillo, all under his fake names. He’s been here for a decade.”  
  
Lestrade takes the cue and they spend another half hour discussing the case. John says hardly anything, but he makes tea.  
  
When Lestrade gets up to leave, he asks John to go down the pub with him for a quick pint.  
  
John looks at Sherlock. “Do you still need me here?”  
  
Sherlock shakes his head. His phone is humming against his thigh as if charged with low voltage electricity.  
  
John doesn’t move for a moment. He looks at Sherlock with an odd plea in his eyes, but Sherlock doesn’t know what John wants from him. Does he want Sherlock to stop him from going out? Is it a plea for Sherlock to not talk to Jim after John leaves? Or for Sherlock to actually talk to Jim, tell him to stop calling? There John stands, small and uncertain, as if _he_ is a riddle to be figured out, as if Sherlock not doing it is keeping John trapped inside a wrapper in the shape of himself.  
  
What a ridiculous idea. Sherlock’s mind is obviously turning to mash, now it’s been released from the blissful grip of the case.  
  
“I’ll see you later,” he says, and turns his back to John.  
  
***  
  
Sherlock deletes the two messages Jim sends him next without reading them—a feat of will-power if there ever was one—and spends next ninety minutes playing the violin. John returns, smelling of pub and Chinese; he unpacks the food and dishes it out, then brings it to the sitting room with chopsticks for Sherlock and a fork for himself.  
  
“I still can’t understand how someone with your excellent motor skills can’t use chopsticks,” Sherlock says. “You’re a doctor, for God’s sake.”  
  
“And I can’t understand how someone with your posh upbringing can speak with his mouth full,” John retorts. He pierces a piece of chicken with his fork, but it stops mid-way to his mouth.  
  
“Did, um, Jim call again?” he asks.  
  
Sherlock shakes his head, chewing. He swallows, then speaks. “Texted. I deleted the messages.” He pauses, looking at John. John’s lips have gone shiny with oil and soy sauce. “He won’t call anymore,” Sherlock adds.  
  
John stays still for a few seconds, then nods, and puts the bite into his mouth.  
  
***  
  
John spends a blissful Sunday, but as the day turns to night it’s as if lava’s replaced the blood in his veins.  
  
Everything Sherlock says or does begs for John to touch him. At first John confuses the urge with gladness that they’ve finally talked, cleared the air. But when he catches Sherlock watching him for the third time that night, John wishes him goodnight and goes to his bedroom. There, he takes himself in hand and with images of Sherlock’s bare arms, of the hair as it trails down Sherlock’s abdomen, he bites his pillow as he rocks his hips and comes within two minutes.  
  
On Monday morning John is relieved to go to work. By Monday afternoon he is contemplating finding a part-time job again. On Monday night he thinks that Sherlock is both an annoying prick and a princess, all at once—John doesn’t masturbate in protest, but he reviews his position on the matter on Tuesday morning in the shower, thanks to Sherlock using it before John.  
  
Finally, on Tuesday they have a case! John can’t get to Baker Street fast enough when Sherlock summons him. John isn’t sure what he’s itching for more—some action or being around Sherlock again. Being around Sherlock in action, he concludes as the case unfolds.  
  
On Wednesday afternoon Greg Lestrade makes an arrest that might just give him his next promotion and comes to Baker Street for an informal debriefing.  
  
Greg is sitting in Sherlock’s chair, right ankle propped across his left leg, amusement in his eyes and contentment on his face, as he watches Sherlock expand on the case. John feels content, too. Some of his frustration has petered out, but some of it is turning from simmer to boil, as John watches Sherlock’s wrist accentuate demurely his brilliant deductions.  
  
John is rather taken with the wrist when Sherlock’s phone rings. Sherlock continues speaking, eyes rolling in irritation at the interruption—  
  
Then he looks at the display and abruptly closes his mouth.  
  
John has expected this phone call. He resents it with his whole being, but he is nonetheless glad he’s present when it comes. Judging by Sherlock’s reaction, it’s the first call since Friday night.  
  
Sherlock hangs up without answering. John feels his own powers of observation positively thrive—he is able to spot the tiniest twitch of anxiety on Sherlock’s brow, the derailment in his eyes. What they mean John needs to hear from Sherlock’s lips.  
  
“Who was that?” he asks.  
  
Sherlock stares at him and John’s stomach drops at the prospect of being shut out again, of another rollercoaster ride like the one they had in the last few weeks. John can’t take it—  
  
“Jim,” Sherlock says. “It was Jim.”  
  
John feels terribly thirsty.  
  
“Aren’t you going to talk to him?” he asks. In his peripheral vision he catches Greg shift, planting both his feet on the floor.  
  
“No,” Sherlock replies. “I don’t intend to talk to him at all.”  
  
On cue Sherlock’s phone chimes with a message. Fucking Jim. _Fucking leave him alone._  
  
Two faint red spots have appeared on Sherlock’s cheekbones. He reads the message, then his fingers fly over the display and the phone disappears into his pocket. He looks distracted but…resolved. Yes, resolved, that’s what he looks like. John realizes he’s breathing through his mouth as Sherlock tells Greg something or the other about the man they just caught.  
  
Greg for his part looks a cross between shrewd, nosey, and gobsmacked, but quickly regains his focus, and he and Sherlock pick the threads of the case for another half hour. John retreats to the kitchen to make tea.  
  
Greg is at the door, leaving, when he turns to John. “Fancy a quick pint to unwind a bit?”  
  
John finds that he quite fancies that, actually.  
  
***  
  
“Ta,” John says, taking the proffered pint from Greg’s hand.  
  
Greg nods and settles in his seat, raises a glass. “Cheers.”  
  
They both drink and sigh in unison.  
  
“Listen,” Greg starts immediately. “Tell me to sod off, ’cause it’s none of my business, but that Jim bloke who called Sherlock…His name’s not Jim Moriarty, is it?”  
  
John is momentarily stunned. He sometimes forgets Greg was part of Sherlock’s life for years before John.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “It is. Do you know him?”  
  
Greg scratches his head. “I do, actually, yeah. Kinda.” He pauses. “That’s how I met Sherlock.”  
  
John has leant forward and now drops his back against the chair backrest. “How?” he asks.  
  
“I was investigating a murder in Angel,” Greg says. “I was at an address, interviewing a possible connection, when my boss called me out of the blue and told me to go to this address near-by. I went there; I thought it was to do with the investigation.” Greg leans back, too. “What I found was a scene. Big Georgian house and right outside one bloke, looking deranged, shouting in another bloke’s face, who was just standing there, white as a sheet. Neighbours were at their doors, dogs barking, you know what I mean. I had no idea why my chief had sent me there, but I had to intervene.”  
  
Greg takes a big swig; his beer sloshes in the glass as it hits the table. “I have to say, I’ve never seen Sherlock so speechless and bloody…passive like he was then.” A small smile twists Greg’s lips. “Proof that first impressions don’t always count.”  
  
John hums, tries to smile back. “What was the problem?”  
  
Greg shrugs. “I can’t tell you to this day. As soon as I pushed between the two of them, that Moriarty bloke just went limp. All he did was stare at Sherlock. I still remember his face, actually. Blimey.” Greg’s eyebrows lift. “Have you met him?”  
  
“Yeah. He turned up at the flat a few weeks ago.”  
  
“Is he—I mean, are they…getting back together?” Even Greg’s pointy hair looks attentive.  
  
John shakes his head. “No. But he’s been texting Sherlock, he’s really—He’s messing with his head and you know what that means for someone like Sherlock. I mean, you know he’s all…gobby and he’s clever and all that, but he’s not really—” John puffs his cheeks, frustrated with his speech, but Greg nods in understanding.  
  
“I don’t know how,” John starts again. “I mean, do you know anything about Moriarty? About them—how…” John pauses, tries to figure out what he’s actually asking. But again Greg seems to get it before him.  
  
“I can’t tell you much about him or about the two of them, to be honest. Sherlock didn’t press charges that night and Moriarty just left. I looked him up on the system later—no record. Anyway, an old biddy came to me—you know what they’re like, don’t miss a thing—and told me she’d seen Moriarty coming and going at all hours, sitting in his car outside the house once or twice. I tried talking to Sherlock, but he shut the door in my face.”  
  
“I bet _that_ looks right in hindsight,” John says, smiling despite himself.  
  
Greg’s grin suddenly transforms his face into brightness, but then he clears his throat again. His eyes become alert.  
  
“So I’m left on the empty street,” he says slowly, “looking around and wondering what the hell…when a big posh car pulls up.”  
  
“Right,” John drags.  
  
“Yeah.” Greg nods. “Met two Holmeses in one night. Took me a week to recover.”  
  
The smile is still playing around his eyes, but John catches them go a curious shade darker.  
  
“Mycroft talked at me for ten minutes like he does, you know—I didn’t know who the fuck he was, but there you go. He said Sherlock was his brother and the other bloke was his ex who’d been stalking him, then said he would have wanted me to meet Sherlock under more fortunate circumstances. I left there thinking that I’d wasted an hour of my time, that everyone I’d met was…mad, and that I wouldn’t see any of them again.”  
  
Greg lifts his beer to his mouth and drinks a quarter of it. When he lowers the glass, his eyes glisten. “Two days later Sherlock turned up in my office, solved the case in fifteen minutes, insulted half my team, and the rest, as they say, is history.”  
  
***  
  
Later, when he eats Chinese at home with Sherlock, John watches him use his chopsticks with ridiculous elegance and is rarely, completely overwhelmed by the sheer complexity, the sheer existence of Sherlock Holmes.  
  
…Who chooses that moment to mumble with his mouth full, “I still can’t understand how someone with your excellent motor skills can’t use chopsticks. You’re a doctor, for God’s sake.”  
  
John wants to hug him so badly that he contemplates stabbing himself in the leg with his fork.  
  
“And I can’t understand how someone with your posh upbringing can speak with his mouth full,” he says and stabs a piece of chicken instead.  
  
It’s strange how free he feels to ask the next question.  
  
“Did, uh, Jim call again?”  
  
This time Sherlock swallows before speaking. “Texted. I deleted the messages.” He looks at John and John can swear his eyes go to John’s lips. “He won’t call anymore,” Sherlock says.  
  
John chews his food well and thinks how the Chinese from that restaurant is always top-notch.

 

 

_Chapter Eighteen_

  
_Birds flying high, you know how I feel  
Sun in the sky, you know how I feel  
Breeze driftin' on by, you know how I feel_  
  
Sherlock wakes up gradually, eyelids fluttering as if they’re undecided about their purpose. He feels warm and light; for a moment he just lies still, looking at his eyelashes. In a few seconds he lifts his head and scans the room, then shuffles under the covers until they reach to his nose.  
  
The last ten days have been excellent. Good cases, _imaginative_ cases. Sherlock has seen Mycroft three times and only once was his brother his usual irritating self. John was given a final warning at work yesterday for his frequent absences, but he doesn’t seem bothered about it—an attitude of which Sherlock whole-heartedly approves. Because of all the work, Sherlock has been able to afford putting activities on the back burner, saving them for days when boredom threatens to reign again. One of them is cross-referencing his cases—he is quite looking forward to it.  
  
Finally, there’ve been subtle signs of someone’s extraordinary presence behind each case.  
  
For months Sherlock has traced even the most tenuous connection to the man whose name still rings in his ears with the dying cabbie’s voice. A fan. Sherlock feels flattered, of course, more so that someone would watch him from afar, and _still_ be able to appreciate his work. _The Science of Deduction_ is the masterpiece of Sherlock’s life. Sherlock finds it insulting—although not baffling—that it hasn’t brought in hordes of admirers and studious followers. Anyway, he would rather have one brilliant mind in the shadows than a thousand poor ones in his face.  
  
He’s shared everything with John in the last ten days: work, company, food, even sleep—that nap John took drooling against Sherlock’s back wasn’t technically shared, because Sherlock was wide awake, but it _felt_ like sharing. Still, he’s hidden his guilty, simmering joy at finding that invisible presence at play, closer and closer. John wasn’t too pleased when Sherlock danced the Thorpe Mansion cook around the house kitchen when she mentioned this was the fourth death of an elderly family member in the last four weeks. Sherlock really wishes John wasn’t so short-sighted about these things, but he can’t expect John to be _absolutely_ perfect.  
  
He stretches until his upturned palms press against the wall behind the bed headrest and his feet touch the frame at the other end. He then pushes, enjoying the resistance, the burn. The _John_ -feeling is swirling in him like cognac in a tulip glass and Sherlock shuts his eyes.  
  
***  
  
He has a banana and a cup of tea with what’s left of the Garibaldis, then gets on with the cross-referencing, managing to lose himself in his mental quarters for what must be three hours—or seven? It’s glorious, wonderful; better than cocaine, better than anything. John is there, too, the notion of his return to Sherlock’s world from wherever John is—Sherlock only registers a John-absence—stretched behind the data like a restful background of white Egyptian cotton. Sherlock has the contents of _all_ his boxes out, and the order he finds in the flat, in himself, makes him happy like few things do. He is methodical. He is thorough. He has the promise of a brilliant criminal mastermind, a worthy opponent. He has the cases, he has Baker Street, he has John. The world stands on the tip of a pin and Sherlock Holmes is its master.  
  
His last thought before the explosion is that when he’s done they should probably start tidying from the landing.  
  
***  
  
John has compartmentalisation down to an art.  
  
He has put everything on probation. His relationship with Sherlock, for one. John’s been enjoying the unarticulated sense of closeness that’s settled between them, has gone with the flow, waiting to see where it leads, _how_ it ends. Maybe with a trickle, or maybe like a river running into the sea, or maybe with a waterfall? He doesn’t think about it, not anymore. He wonders whether he hasn’t had have some kind of burn-out.  
  
John’s job is on probation, too—actually, that goes both ways, because so is John. Sherlock has had more work than you can shake a stick at and John can’t quite bring himself to care about his own employment prospects.  
  
Now, James Moriarty is seriously on probation in John’s books; one more stint and John is resolved to do something about him. The guy is a complete creep, as confirmed by Greg. John made Greg run a check on him again, just in case, but thankfully there was still nothing on the system. It doesn’t mean John isn’t going to watch for any sign of his presence in Sherlock’s future.  
  
Unlike John, Sherlock seems to have forgotten ‘Jim’ ever existed. John isn’t going to be a fool and drag things back out in the open. Especially when they’re so dark and oblique that he keeps away from them. Much like when he was little he kept away from that corner next door to his grandparents' house—the one where granddad and the butcher used to go around Easter, and then John’s family had lamb for days.  
  
***  
  
He’s on the Underground—if he had been on the bus, he would have seen the pandemonium from Oxford Street. He comes out of Baker Street station—  
  
And then John is running, the vehicles and the buildings on both sides of the road jumping up and down in front of his eyes as if they’re little blocks of Lego. There are Lego characters, too, some of them dressed as policemen, some as medical personnel, and some as ordinary people, obstructing John’s way when he’s desperate to _get there_.  
  
He registers the cavity in the building opposite theirs and a thought crosses his mind: _Please, please, let there be no one hurt_. It disappears like a thin wisp of white smoke, swallowed by the thick dark cloud that is John’s breathless prayer of _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock._  
  
***  
  
_Fish in the sea, you know how I feel  
River running free, you know how I feel  
Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel_  
  
Sherlock has blacked out a number of times in his life, and has found some of the experiences quite interesting. He’s had visions sometimes, images and sounds, jumbled up together or separated neatly, like the frames in a film strip. Fragments of Sherlock’s mind with no obvious logic or reason for their existence, and yet Sherlock’s mind still produced them.  
  
This time he had just two. One image was that of his small scar from the chicken pox, the one near his bottom lip—Sherlock was looking at it in a magnifying mirror. The scar seemed huge, pale and deep like a moon crater. (John made Sherlock watch _Apollo 13_. Sherlock didn’t like it.)  
  
The other image was of a fish, a shiny fish that kept zigzagging in and out of sight. Sherlock knows that one.  
  
“I know that one.” Sherlock hears himself mumble.  
  
“I’m sorry?” says Mycroft.  
  
“I wasn’t talking to you.”  
  
***  
  
He’s so glad John’s finally back that if it wasn’t for Mycroft, Sherlock would shout back “John!” to John’s loud and repetitive calls of his name.  
  
But of course John needs time to process what’s going on. Sherlock will have to wait for his brain to catch up; then there’s the probability that John will find this emotionally engaging. Sherlock was hoping to make him get rid of all these people. They are treading over Sherlock’s papers—really, what unfortunate timing for an explosion! But now he’ll have to put up with the crowds some more, because John’s staring at him, dismay and care exuding from every pore of his face. Still, splitting headache and ringing ears aside, with John here Sherlock begins to feel the ubiquitous blanket’s textile between his fingers.  
  
John has questions, as usual, such as why he wasn’t called. Sherlock did want to call him; in fact, it was his first instinct. Every time something happens to Sherlock he wants to call John. John has told him off multiple times about ringing him ‘for no good reason’. Like the last time when Sherlock estimated that John’s laptop’s battery had about two months life left in it. It was important to let John know. Besides, Sherlock wanted to start looking for a new laptop for John as a present, but wanted to find out whether John wasn’t attached to this one—sentiment, you can’t deduce that! Sherlock had to call.  
  
So John has told him to use his judgement about whether something can wait. It was when Sherlock thought about their roles being reversed that he knew this was one of those things that couldn’t wait. But just then Mrs. Hudson started fretting and saying, “We must call John,” and Mycroft said _he_ was going to call him, so that was the end of that.  
  
John tells off Mycroft as well—in his softest voice, the one that leaves you in no doubt he’s not happy with you. Sherlock tries to argue that he can’t be blamed for being blown up, but then there are bright spots in his vision, so he closes his mouth.  
  
He watches John as if through a fog and he suddenly has the strange mental image of himself as a large, curly, shredded bit of seaweed. John, in his black jacket and his dark blue trousers, looks like an anchor to which Sherlock can attach himself, then spread around him, floating freely in the water.  
  
He might need to lie down at some point later.  
  
***  
  
“Sherlock!” John yells from the landing downstairs.  
  
“Sherlock!” He pants up the stairs.  
  
“Sherlock!” He begs as he storms into their sitting room.  
  
Sherlock looks up from the sofa, eyes the clearest sea green. He’s sitting with a blanket over his shoulders. There are a few plasters on his face and neck; his wrist is bandaged. He’s wearing John’s slippers.  
  
It’s all John can do not to fall over him and press him against his body, kiss his neck, his shoulders, his stupid, beautiful, high forehead—God, John loves Sherlock’s forehead so much, he might have to invent a scratch there, some reason to touch it. He wants to touch it with his lips, drag them there and feel the skin: cool, yet faintly warm, smooth and scented, too. It has to be—Sherlock smells of Sherlock. John’s been near him enough times, like that time when he fell asleep, face pressed against Sherlock’s back, and when he woke up his entire head was full of Sherlock, and John wiped his mouth, and wanted to weep—  
  
He realizes he’s standing at the door, gaping at Sherlock. He looks around, numb, noting a distressed Mrs. Hudson, talking to a police constable. Mycroft is on the phone by the window—or what’s left of the window. John’s eyes slide over the glass on the floor, the various debris scattered everywhere, and he turns back to Sherlock, with a semi-vocal _What_ on his lips.  
  
“Gas leak,” Sherlock says.  
  
John takes a step in, continuing to stare at him.  
  
“You okay?” he asks.  
  
“Hmm.” Sherlock nods. “Some of my files are completely ruined, though,” he adds, face sour.  
  
John shakes his head and advances another step closer. He notes the width of the bandage on Sherlock’s wrist and that seems to poke him to life.  
  
“Hang on a minute—why didn’t you call me? When did this happen?”  
  
“An hour ago. Everyone pestered me to call you, but I knew you’d be here in an hour anyway, so there wasn’t much of a point.”  
  
“There wasn’t much of a— It’s an explosion, Sherlock. You could have been seriously injured, not to mention—”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t, was I? And by the time I came around, the place was already crawling with people, flashing lights in my eyes, bandaging me…There’s the shock blanket.” Sherlock holds the end of the blanket with two fingers. “Again.”  
  
John opens his mouth, but at that moment Mycroft approaches them, sliding his phone in his inner pocket.  
  
“John,” he says as if they’re having tea with cucumber sandwiches.  
  
“You can just call me, you know,” John tells him, skipping any bloody greetings. Bloody Mycroft. “Next time he gets blown-up, because it _will_ happen—you can call me. You don’t have to have his permission—I give you mine.”  
  
“It’s hardly my fault they haven’t checked their pipes since the sixties,” Sherlock says from his spot, but John can barely hear him. Mycroft is holding John’s eyes, his own tired and inscrutable. He tilts his head towards the sofa.  
  
“As you can see, he’s quite all right,” he says.  
  
John sighs and drops his head, resigned.  
  
***  
  
_And this old world is a new world  
And a bold world  
For me_  
  
For Sherlock the following thirty minutes might as well be thirty days. At long last he and John are left alone. Mycroft takes his phone—he spent most of the time on it—and his umbrella, and with a few hissed words from Sherlock for the road, he departs. Two minutes later it’s Mrs. Hudson’s turn.  
  
“Mrs. Hudson, do stop fussing and leave,” Sherlock says.  
  
It does the trick. “Oh,” Mrs. Hudson lightly exclaims, fusses for another few seconds, randomly putting some magazines on top of each other. Then with a worried nod to John she leaves, voice trailing down the stairs. “You look after him and call me, if you need anything—popping down to the shops, or if you want me to cook—”  
  
“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” John interrupts her from the landing. “Thanks.”  
  
“You were quite rude, you know,” he informs Sherlock on his return. Sherlock ignores the remark and meets his eyes.  
  
The loud sounds from the street are still usurping their sitting room. Some temporary measures about their windows will be taken later apparently. Sherlock shivers lightly and John, who’s been looking back at him in silence, stirs.  
  
“We should go to your bedroom and—” John stutters and Sherlock frowns, bewildered. “You,” John starts again, pointing at Sherlock as if there could be any doubt who ‘you’ is, “should go to your bedroom and get into bed.”  
  
Sherlock will do no such thing.  
  
“Oh, please. I’m fine. Besides, I need to start on the papers. God knows how I’ll—”  
  
“You’re not seriously thinking about working right now!”  
  
“Of course not.” Ridiculous. Twilight is seeping into the room already. “I need light and the electricity will be fixed in a few hours. I’m only going to collect the papers from the floor. You can start at—”  
  
John is smiling and shaking his head, and if Sherlock didn’t know that mulish expression, he would have been tricked into thinking John was being obliging. “No, no,” John cuts through his words, tone so much the way Sherlock knew it would be that warmth flushes up Sherlock’s thighs as if someone’s spilt hot tea in his lap.  
  
“No,” John continues. “You are going to your bedroom. You were thrown across the room only— There’s glass _everywhere_ , Sherlock. Do you have any idea what the force of that explosion must have been? No!” John raises his hand, his previously animated face solidifying into a stern expression. “Not open for debate. Up. Now.”  
  
Sherlock’s single _tsk_ is drowned only by his deep sigh. His massive eye-roll makes his vision spin, but before he’s had the chance to note the significance of this little fact, he’s on his feet, jumping up as he does habitually.  
  
When he was little, Sherlock used to drop on the floor on occasion—such was the power of his head rushes. When near, Mycroft showed astounding reflexes for the fat boy he was and always managed to catch him. It seems this peculiarity of Sherlock’s brings out the unexpected in his companions. John, small John Watson, is suddenly bearing the whole of Sherlock’s height and weight draped over his injured shoulder, and all that’s come out of him is a double “Hey, hey,” and a single, “Easy.”  
  
Sherlock can’t move, so he waits. Stars fizzle out behind his closed eyelids and needles press all over his skin. For a few seconds the world is dim, vague, barely there—and Sherlock is the seaweed, languid and weightless, supported…  
  
He turns his head and tucks his nose into John’s neck, right where the shirt is rubbing against the skin. Sherlock inhales deeply; oxygen storms his blood stream. All that’s in and around Sherlock is John—Sherlock’s stomach flips, then falls, turns, falls…  
  
He detaches himself, pulls back and finds John’s face very close, eyes unravelling themselves right _there_. Sherlock doesn’t even need to do anything, doesn't need to observe—he only has to look to know. He only has to _see_ John.  
  
He does.  
  
“John.”  
  
Before the name’s left his lips, Sherlock’s phone rings in his gown, making them both jump. John lets go of him gingerly, as an afterthought. Sherlock is perfectly steady on his feet.  
  
They are still looking at each other. Sherlock hesitates for a second, before taking the phone out and finally looking at the screen. He takes the call immediately.  
  
“Lestrade?”  
  
“Listen,” Lestrade says. “I’m still in the building across from you. We’ve found something. How are you?”  
  
“I’m fine. What have you found?”  
  
“We don’t think it’s a gas leak.” Sherlock’s heart speeds up. “We found a strong box. A very strong box. And inside of it there’s an envelope.”  
  
Sherlock’s mind takes over his heart at double speed.  
  
“Addressed to me?” he asks. It’s Moran. It’s Moran. It _has_ to be.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Hand writing or print?”  
  
“Hand writing.”  
  
“Excellent!”  
  
“Can you come?” Lestrade asks, silly man. “I mean, we’ll have to X-ray it before you can touch it, but I thought you might want to have a look at where we found it, see what you can get from that.”  
  
Sherlock’s grip tightens on John’s healthy shoulder. John is looking at him, ready. Sherlock smiles at him, then lets go.  
  
“Of course,” he says. “How can I refuse?”  
  
***  
  
John has never been so close to raising his voice at Mrs. Hudson. He wants to shut down everyone else but Sherlock, wants them to leave, wants the vehicles outside to just…teleport out of here.  
  
But Sherlock’s the resident rude person, so he’s the one to chase away everybody, then embroil John in an argument within the space of thirty seconds. The idiot wants to work, despite the fact that he’s already shivering—it’s getting darker, the temperatures are dropping, and their blasted windows are…well, blasted, for God’s sake! Normally, John would indulge Sherlock with a longer repartee, but not right now.  
  
“No,” he says. “Not open for debate. Up. Now.”  
  
Sherlock will do what John says, of course, but not before he offers a sample of how expressive his face can be when dealing with “unreasonable” requests. John has never been bothered by the performance— _that_ he always indulges. Sherlock rolls his eyes, wincing, then jumps to his feet.  
  
Next thing John knows, he has a genius draped over his left shoulder, limp like a child that’s fallen asleep. No sense of his personal limitations, none whatsoever.  
  
John supports him without any effort—it’s like his body has revealed a mysterious core of steel in him. For a split second he contemplates crouching and shifting Sherlock onto his right shoulder, lifting, then carrying him to the bedroom. He’s murmuring something in Sherlock’s curls, his arms tightening around the slim body, and it isn’t just steel—John knows exactly what’s at the core of this, of him..  
  
Sherlock turns his head, burying his face in John’s neck, and takes a deep breath that dizzies John, scatters his thoughts without a trace. John swallows. He tingles all over, heart madly racing, and he doesn’t let go of Sherlock, because he’ll fall himself.  
  
No. He’s already fallen. He just doesn’t want to let go.  
  
Sherlock slowly pulls away, looks at him. His eyes widen, radiant, like nothing John has ever seen. Sherlock licks his lips and his eyes skim over John’s mouth, then go back up.  
  
John’s name drops out of Sherlock’s lips in the exact same second in which his phone rings in his gown. It nearly gives John a coronary, _Jesus_. He realizes he’s still holding Sherlock so he carefully lets him stand on his own feet. Sherlock seems steady, but keeps his left hand on John’s healthy shoulder. He takes his phone out and looks at the screen.  
  
Then he immediately answers. “Lestrade?”  
  
He listens, and says, “I’m fine. What have you found?”  
  
His eyes light up and meet John’s again. His grip threatens to make a scar on John’s right shoulder to match the one he has on the left. John feels a slow, uneasy throb in his belly.  
  
“Addressed to me?” Sherlock asks, then nods. “Hand writing or print?” Lestrade must have told him what he wants to hear, because his eyes flash. “Excellent!”  
  
John feels curiosity stir, bringing the world back to focus through the haze. Sherlock smiles at him.  
  
And then his hand is gone.  
  
“Of course,” he tells Lestrade. “How can I refuse?”  
  
***  
  
_(48 hours earlier)_  
  
The screen is small, but the image is very clear. It shows a corner of a room, furnished in expensive, contemporary style. There’s a big architectural drawing board and bent over it is the lightweight figure of a man in dark jeans and a sophisticated black shirt.  
  
The screen flickers and a close-up of a pair of thin, feminine hands appears. Under the board’s bright focal light they are rotating an object, examining it.  
  
It’s a mobile phone in a pink case. Its display is unlit and evidently covered with protection foil—fingers peel it off in a flash with a decisive, ripping movement. The man’s thumbs caress the screen. His nails are rounded, perfect. Finally his hands still and he just holds the phone cradled between his palms.  
  
Music has been playing in the background all along. For several seconds nothing happens, then the hands disappear and in a moment the volume of the song goes up.  
  
The screen flickers again and shows the wider shot from before. The man is standing with his feet slightly apart, holding the phone pressed to his chest, one hand on top of the other. His eyes are closed; his lips are stretched whimsically. His chest is rising and falling in a steady rhythm—he doesn’t move but just listens as the singer’s throaty voice carries the song to its end.  
  
_Oh freedom is mine  
And I know how I feel  
It's a new dawn  
It's a new day  
It's a new life  
For me_  
  
Suddenly the man’s head drops back and his face lights up with a full-toothed, dimpled smile.  
  
The singer launches into an undistinguishable cascade of elated sounds. The man throws his arms wide open and rolls his neck with her voice—left to right, right to left—his face in quiet rapture. He’s firmly clutching the pink phone in his right hand.  
  
The screen goes black.  
  
Mycroft slumps back against the backrest of the chair and stares at the switched off monitor, unblinking, for a very long time. His chin finally lolls to his chest; his hand rises and covers his eyes.  
  
At last he looks up and takes hold of the single folder that’s been sitting on the desk next to the monitor, then opens it.  
  
On the front page, a large photograph of James Moriarty is attached to the paper with a clip. Mycroft deftly pulls it from the clip’s hold and brings it closer to his eyes. On the back of the photograph, the name “Sebastian Moran” is written in big, capital letters with indigo ink.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

 

**Author's Note:**

> My deepest thanks to my amazing beta [](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/)**disastrolabe** for all her support throughout the process of writing this and for her typical high-standard beta work.
> 
> The story was originally inspired by a few Christmas prompts by fishclown, theimprobable1, random_nexus, and queenstardust—the LJ names of all these wonderful people.
> 
> If you feel like dropping me a line, please do so—I'd love to hear from you! You can do it here or at my Livejournal [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/59022.html#cutid1).
> 
> Finally, I have the intention to write the second part of this—it was evident very early on this would be a two-parter—and I even have some early drafts on it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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